Hemnet Group AB (publ)

STO:HEM

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q2

[Cecilia Beck-Friis, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the presentation of Hemnet Group's results for the Second Quarter of 2022. My name is Cecilia Beck-Friis; and I'm joined today for the last time by CFO, Carl Johan Akesson; and for the first time by Interim CFO, Jens Melin, who I will introduce later on in this presentation.As usual, we will go through the highlights followed by an operational and financial update, before ending with the Q&A. So with that, let's start with the highlights on Page 4. This is the sixth consecutive quarter that we outperformed our financial targets. I've said before that these targets are no limit for us. Instead, we try to exceed these targets each quarter and for the 6 times since the IPO, a combination of successful execution of our strategy, coupled with tailwinds from an active property market has resulted in strong growth in net sales and EBITDA.Net sales grew by almost 27%, driven largely by a 34% growth in ARPL and EBITDA grew by 31%, reaching a margin of almost 54%. CJ will go deeply into the drivers of these numbers later on in this presentation. We have had beneficial tailwinds from an active property market with listings increasing 3.2% over last year. We have also seen that the proportion of customers upgrading their listing to Plus and Premium continues to increase, driven by a combination of product development, increasing awareness and changing needs in the new property markets.We are once again seeing growth in the business-to-business segment. This segment continues to be traffic-dependent, but despite the fact that traffic still remains below 2021 levels, our customers continue to see Hemnet as one of their most important marketing channels and continue to invest in our products as a way to build branding and to drive exposure to new potential customers.For the last 3 or 4 years, we have seen a strong development in revenue from our business-to-business customers. This has manily been a result of a step-by-step building a stronger organization that could realize more of the potential in our advertising business. For the last couple of quarters, we have presented small decreases for business-to-business revenue, partly due to high traffic comps from the pandemic. And it is therefore encouraging to say that we have moved back to positive numbers this quarter with adjusted revenue growth of 4.3%. Finally, we have commenced our capital return program with a combined SEK89 million returned to shareholders during Q2 from our dividend and share buybacks. Our target for the buybacks specifically is to return a total of SEK450 million up until the next AGM. So Jens will provide more color on this later on.Turning now to Page 6 for a business and market update. This has been another active quarter for the property market, but this time on the back of clear signals that we are entering what is known as a buyer's market. This means that price expectations are falling and listing duration is going up, resulting in increasing difficulty for sellers to get the desired price for their property. Despite this or perhaps because of this, the volume for the quarter is up 3.2%. We believe that some sellers have been accelerating their sales process in order to sell before any further interest rate increases. So far in Q3, volumes are on par with last year's -- last year, and it will be interesting to follow the development going forward.What we see currently is a highly unusual combination of economic factors, and I think it is safe to say that there is some uncertainty around the development for both the economy at large and at the property market. We don't want to speculate right now about the development of listing volumes and can just conclude that we are well positioned with the business model that should be effective both in the seller's market and the buyer's market.On this front, I want to spend a minute talking about the state of the market, especially the potential risk that Hemnet could be facing in a downturn. Turning to Page 7. We are seeing a market characterized by a higher level of uncertainty and also a market that we have now experienced -- not experienced in Hemnet's recent history. However, the strength of Hemnet's business model is that we are well equipped for this type of market because our revenue is primarily generated by published listings, not from completed transactions. In this market, it also becomes more important for sellers to generate the best possible exposure for what is usually the biggest transaction of their lives, and this is something that Hemnet offers the absolute best conditions for.A decline in transaction volumes would have a direct impact on our revenue. However, Swedish demand for property is driven by organic needs. Thus, there is limited speculation and rental is not an alternative to buying and selling. This means that during the worst recent financial crisis in 2008, transactions in Sweden declined only by 11%, which does not necessarily translate into published listing declining by 11%. This has been the most significant decline in property volumes that we have seen for any recent year based on data from Statistics Sweden.It is important to underscore that we are somewhat protected from the risk since Hemnet is based on attempt to sell rather than close transactions and that these 2 are not always correlated. It is clear that we're entering a buyer's market, meaning that it will become increasingly difficult for sellers to issue the right price for their property. We have already seen this impacting the rate of turnover of property. On the flip side, Hemnet's role and our seller products become increasingly important for sellers looking to maximize price by accessing the largest potential audience for their listing. We believe that there is no better place in Sweden to market the property for sale done on Hemnet.Decline in property prices have a limited impact on our revenue as we price our packages based on the asking price of a property. However, declining asking prices could impact our revenue. But with that said, we still see significant pricing headroom remaining, meaning that the price a seller pays for Hemnet today is relatively low compared to the high value we deliver. Perhaps more importantly, property classifies is not a discretionary spending, especially in Sweden. Given Hemnet's reach, we are confident that the property seller looking to maximize their sales price will continue to invest in the Hemnet listing.With regards to interest rates, of course, this may impact the property prices, but with regards to the impact on our business, we see this challenge as limited, given that Hemnet currently has virtually 0 leverage. In summary, Hemnet has a strong position in the market and a robust business model. I feel confident that we are well equipped to continue delivery according to our plan with a focus on developing and broadening our market position and our business.Let's now spend a minute to talk about what products we have launched in the quarter, turning first to Page 8 and our strategy. The strategy remains unchanged, and I will not go into detail on this page. It is available for you to read online, in this and in the past quarterly reports. What I can say is that with the strong momentum in product development and launches across all strategic areas, and I will now go over some of the changes from this quarter. Starting with consumers on Page 9. It is imperative that we continue to invest in the best-in-class customer experience, continue improving our proposition to property buyers, for example, making property search more relevant. We have launched 2 concrete improvements this quarter. Firstly, we have added new search filters for attributes like balcony and ownership type. Secondly, we are testing a product to simplify the process for creating an account at Hemnet, making it easier to self searches and track the value of your property. We expect this to be launched in the near future.Moving now to Page 10, and property sellers. Here, we continuously develop our seller products to be as relevant as possible for our consumers. During this quarter, we have made this change specifically linked to a more challenging property market and that change is to add a fee renewal of the property listing to Hemnet Premium. Renewal of a listing will reset the debt associated with listing and make it appear as new in the search results, allowing sellers support and restart to sell in case the property is not sold. We hope that this new attribute will make Hemnet Premium more appealing to property sellers, especially in the current market.Now looking at business-to-business and specifically real estate agents on Page 11. As we have previously communicated, we have accelerated product development for business-to-business customers significantly in the spring. During the spring, we first launched a find the broker product that connects potential property sellers and real estate agents. During Q2, we have expanded this product to include a paid subscription model that gives paying agents more visibility in the result list for reported sales prices. This subscription is based on a number of listings that the broker office publishes and requires an existing Hemnet business subscription. Going forward, we will continue expanding this product and its commercialization. We believe that finding a seller is one of, if not, the largest pain point for real estate brokers and will become exponentially more important as we are entered at more challenging property market, which is why this remains a key development area for Hemnet.Finally, property developers on Page 12. Here, we have made some small, but very important changes to our products and publishing rules. By changing the publishing rules for a single new development listing, we ensure that all listings are treated equally on Hemnet. We have also updated our revenue model so there are no listings that are included in the property development package. I will not go into detail into these changes, but the key takeaway for you should be that this increase is the fairness on Hemnet, while also increasing the revenue potential from the customer group. Furthermore, we are planning on adding a renew listing product after the summer, similar to what we have included in Hemnet Premium for property sellers, again, to mitigate the challenges from a difficult property market. These changes enable us to continue with product development according to the strategy defined for this customer group.Let's turn to Page 13 and talk about our key revenue driver, ARPL. ARPL continues to grow, up almost 34% in Q2. This is driven by a combination of product where we have launched both consumer experience improvement and improvements in Hemnet Premium, conversion, where we again increased demand from property sellers as well as agents continuing to recommend plus a premium more and more. We have also done price adjustments across all products.Now turning to an update on headcount on Page 14. We started the quarter with 121 employees and ended it with 121 employees. We had, of course, targeted an increase in the number of employees. However, up until recently, I would say that we have met a highly competitive labor market for product development related roles. This has affected the number of new colleagues coming in during Q2. Another factor has been an elevated number of levers, which we believe is natural after a very low numbers during the pandemic. We are continuing to recruit very actively while others are downsizing. We are a profitable growth company. And after Q3, where we still expect small net changes, we believe that we can have a stronger finish in Q4. To support this, we have recruited a new member to our management team, Anna Kempe, will be joining Hemnet after the summer as Chief People and Culture Officer, with a focus to further strengthen our position as an attractive place to work for both current and new employees.On the topic of recruitment, I wanted to provide you with an update of our management team on Page 15. We welcome Jens Melin as Interim CFO of Hemnet. Jens is currently the Head of Group Accounting at Hemnet and has been with the company for more than 3 years, playing an important role in the IPO and subsequent financial reporting. Jens is an authorized public accountant and will assume the role as interim CFO, while we continue to look for a permanent replacement. We are also welcoming Peter Frey, as the new CTO of Hemnet. Peter has 16 years of experience as CTO and brings a wealth of knowledge from previous companies such as Betsson, Bonnier News and Aftonbladet. Peter will play a critical role in our organization as we continue scaling our development capacity to meet the high ambitions set out in our company strategy. Finally, I want to welcome Anna Kempe to our team. Anna brings over 20 years of HR experience and I'm thrilled to have her join at Hemnet to continue improving our perception as an attractive employer in Sweden. Anna has extensive experience from roles that have involved both HR and business responsibilities within companies such as Schibsted, Wise Group and Circle K. This is a new role at Hemnet as the topic of recruitment, culture and employees are playing an increasingly larger strategic role. This recruitment will allow my current colleague, Jessica Sjoberg, to focus solely on questions around communication and brand, having previously also covered HR issues under her combined title. I am very pleased with this recruitment as we continue to strengthen our teams to support our growth journey ahead.Turning now to Page 16 and the final note from me regarding our marketing initiatives. Starting with Guldhemmet gala, that every year celebrates the achievements of the property industry, first initiated by Hemnet in 2019. Since then, the gala has cemented itself as the largest event for the real estate broker and property development industries, providing a platform where individual and achievements can be highlighted and rewarded. I'm thrilled by the response of the recent gala held in Stockholm on this spring, and pleased to see continuously increasing interest for GuldhemmetFrom the property industry. Our ambition with this gala is to continue holding the gala on an annual basis and to share our data and insights and to continue to recognize the hard work of the industry.Secondly, I wanted to provide an update on our new brand platform. During the first half of 2022, we have invested in a new brand platform and the new creative concept for Hemnet, both which we expect to launch in September in the largest TV channels -- in largest TV channel in Sweden as well as other selected media. The purpose of this is to reinforce and remind the users of our position as the top of mind property portal in Sweden and the #1 preference for those looking to buy, sell or broker -- to buy, sell or broker real estate with them. The brand platform will serve as a foundation for future marketing and branding initiatives in future years.On that note, I now want to turn to you to provide you with an update on our financial results.

[Carl Johan Akesson, executive]

Thank you, Cecilia. So let us turn to Slide 18 and the financial highlights for Q2. This is yet another strong quarter from Hemnet, where we see significant growth in both net sales and EBITDA. Starting off on the left-hand side, we have net sales increasing with 27%, continuing in line with our Q1 performance. Our adjusted EBITDA came in at a high number, up 31% from last year. It could be worth mentioning that we don't have any adjustments to EBITDA in this year and in the historic period with the vast majority is IPO-related costs. So typically, very few adjustments. The adjusted EBITDA margin came in at a record high of 53.9%, up 1.7 percentage points from last year. That we reached a new record in the second quarter is not a coincidence as the second and the third quarters have historically been our strongest as market activity is high.Moving to the right-hand side of the slide, we saw ARPL increasing 34%. Cecilia talked about the reasons for that on Page 13, which were a combination of product updates, increased uptake of our value-added services and price adjustments across all seller products. As expected, we continue to see high cash conversion, which was 103% in the quarter. This was more or less the same result as in Q1 this year as we have favorable working capital dynamics as we grow our seller revenue. Leverage came in at 0.2x rolling 12 months adjusted EBITDA. The level is on a similar level to what we saw in Q1 as we have started to return capital to shareholders via dividend and buybacks, and I will come back to that topic in a few slides.If we now turn to Page 19 to look at the net sales by customer category, you will see, of course, revenue from property sellers continues to be the growth driver, up 37% in the quarter, mainly due to ARPL increasing 34% and also with a small contribution from positive volumes. So volumes could be worth mentioning, constitutes about 1/10 of the growth in seller revenue. What is also positive, of course, is that we are back to positive numbers for our 3 other customer groups with a combined growth of 4.3% in the quarter. Adjusting for SEK2 million of items affecting comparability related to marketing campaign with MSF last year, the underlying growth is actually 7.6% for those 3 customer groups.In this group, we continue to have strong demand from real estate agents. We see we had a 31% growth in the quarter. All our established broker products are developing well, maklartipset, Hemnet business and broker new development units. Display revenue from real estate agents are also increasing. Our latest broker product where we help match brokers and new sellers is still in an early phase. We don't have any meaningful revenues from this yet, but instead are focusing very much on building awareness to increase adoption over time.Moving to the last 2 categories, developers and advertisers. The drop is due to lower display revenue, especially from programmatic sales. Looking specifically at display revenues across the 3 customer groups, the combined revenue is stable compared to last year. We have had a couple of quarters with tougher comps or traffic due to inflated numbers during COVID. While we see some improvements in the traffic for Q2, it is still a significant drop compared to last year's numbers. So despite that, we are generating more or less the same revenue, which is a strength within. So in summary, I would say that our B2B portfolio is working well, delivering growth even with tough comps and traffic.Let's move to our adjusted EBITDA bridge on Page 20. We're a growing company with operating leverage in our business model, leading to us moving from SEK110.9 million in 2021 to SEK145.3 million in 2022. We covered the drivers for the SEK59.2 million growth in revenue, so let's instead look at the cost side. The compensation to real estate agents is now growing at a similar pace to our seller revenue, increasing with 34.6% from last year. As a proportion, this meant that compensation was just below 29% in the quarter. The reason for the similar growth rate is that Q2 is the first quarter with full effect from the new compensation model in both years, so both this year and last year. Other external expenses excluding the compensation to agents, is up SEK6.9 million as we have taken in consultants to temporarily fill a few roles while we are doing permanent recruitments. Personnel costs are up SEK7.3 million as we increased the team since Q2 last year and also had the nonannual salary review process, of course.Turning now to Page 21 and our cash and leverage position. We talked about our cash-generative business model and the cash conversion was 103% in the quarter. One factor contributing to this is that when we grow our seller revenue, we tend to see a positive development for working capital. We have to wait until after each quarter end to sum up and pay compensation to real estate agents, while seller revenue is, of course, paid continuously. So good working capital dynamics. Our strong cash conversion led to a similar leverage position to what we saw in Q1, and we ended at 0.2x compared to 0.3x in Q1. As we said in our last call, our dividend and buyback program should stabilize leverage, and this is more or less what we see here. The dividend was paid in May and amounted to SEK56 million, while buybacks totaled SEK40 million -- SEK40.3 million. Out of that, SEK7.5 million was related to our share savings program rather than the SEK450 million buyback program. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of SEK138.2 million.Moving on to Page 22, and a few additional words about the buyback. So we're targeting SEK450 million up until the next AGM. With an weekly press releases about the progress of the buybacks and by Friday last week we had totaled SEK58 million, so adding another SEK25 million since the end of the quarter and leaving a bit less than SEK400 million left to buy. We plan to keep a steady pace up until the next AGM, subject, of course, to any variations in trading volumes as we have structured the program to meet the safe harbor regulations. With this, we are following our dividend policy to distribute excess cash back to shareholders.Before handing back to Cecilia to wrap things up, the final slide in this section is our financial targets on Page 23. Our growth rate measured as an LTM is now at 29%. Our profitability for the first time came in above our target range of 45% to 50%, reaching close to 51% LTM, and leverage, as we said was 0.2x.As we said before, the management team is really looking to meet or exceed these targets as it's quite clear from the performance. As an additional comment on targets, we also just want to refer back to what was said during the latest AGM, which is that if the strong delivery continues, the targets are, of course, something that the Board will review and the performance will be reflected in targets as well. And that concludes my section for today.Before handing back to Cecilia, I think this is my last quarterly call before moving on to a new company off the summer. I also wanted to say a big thank you to everyone listening in today as well as to all our investors, and of course, most of all, to the Hemnet. This is a truly outstanding company, and it's been a true pleasure to be part of this journey for the last 4 years. Thank you.

[Cecilia Beck-Friis, executive]

Thank you, CJ. And I also wanted to take this moment to thank you for the fantastic work that you have done at Hemnet, including your instrumental role in building a strong and well functioning finance, legal and IR team, as well as your work leading up to the IPO. So we wish you the best of luck in the future.This was yet another quarter where we demonstrated our exceptional business model and the result is growth in excess of our financial targets for both net sales and profitability. This despite the fact that we have sales in exceptionally tough comparable quarter as Q2 2021 was indeed an active quarter, both for the property market and for our business-to-business customers. We have experienced a lot of uncertainty in the overall market at the moment, but I feel great about our strong position and our ability to deliver, and I believe that the value of our products for our customers will likely go up as it becomes more challenging for property sellers to get the right price for their property and for real estate agents to find new sellers.And with that, let us move on to the Q&A.

[Operator]

Thank you. [ Operator Instructions ] And our first question will come from Pete Kujala with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

[Pete-Veikko Kujala, analyst]

Hey, thanks for takiny my questions, 2 from me. So firstly on marketing. You have talked a bit about marketing lately and also again with the Q2 results and presentation. So can you flag a little bit how much the spending was in Q2? And what do you expect in the second half? So I'm just trying to get some kind of a ballpark.And then the second question is on revenue from agents that accelerated quite clearly in this quarter. So is the main driver, the new visibility product that you have for them? Or is there something else that's driving this? Thanks.

[Carl Johan Akesson, executive]

All right. Hi, Pete. Thank you for the question. So on the marketing, I would say the majority of the spending is going to be from September and forward, that's when we start to incur media costs. What we've seen now in the first half of the year is more sort of the preparatory work where we sort of set the concept and build the platform. So we have a couple of million in Q2. So nothing that's high.On the agent question and the revenue. So no, it's not actually the new section that is driving the growth in revenue. So it's rather our sort of existing products. And maklartipset and Hemnet business are both developing really well, I would say, and the demand for display for agents is also very solid. So -- so it's sort of a good portfolio we see to have as a base and on any new revenue will be on top of that.

[Pete-Veikko Kujala, analyst]

Yes. All right. Very clear. And good luck, CJ, with everything going forward. Thanks.

[Carl Johan Akesson, executive]

Thank you.

[Operator]

[ Operator Instructions ] Our next question will come from Eric Wisham [ Phonetic ] with Carnegie. Please go ahead.

[Eric Wisham, analyst]

Yes.Hi, team. Thank you for taking my questions. I'll limit myself to 3. Just first off, with the kind of cooling underlying market, could you just recap for us the duration of the listings? How long can the seller have the listing on him before he or she needs to either use the announced service or take down a realist entire app?

[Cecilia Beck-Friis, executive]

Okay. So when we look at the selling time, what we've seen, if you compare the numbers on the apartments from a year ago. So the selling time or the duration has been prolonged with what is going from 14 days to 18 days. And as seller, I mean, you can lose your listing on as long as you want. And if you want to restart the listing, you take it away and then you wait 23 days and then you kind of reset all the data and you will be on top of the list. So then of course, we have other value-added services that you can use, I mean both the plus and premium standing out. And in the result list or Raketen if you want to boost your product.

[Eric Wisham, analyst]

Okay, perfect. Thank you. And I was also wondering, through the quarter, when the market has gradually cooled, have you seen an improving momentum for the value-added services on in plus and premium? Or has that been a fairly constant share of sales through the quarter?

[Cecilia Beck-Friis, executive]

It's hard to say, I would say, because we are still in a growth phase when it comes to our value-added services to plus and premium. So what we see is a continuous growth in the uptake of those products. And -- but I think also to add to that, that it's fair to say that there might be momentum and those products might be even more relevant in a tougher market.

[Eric Wisham, analyst]

Okay, perfect. And then just one last one from me and I'll jump back in the queue. You've talked about plus kind of becoming the new boss. You're clearly literally now growing both plus and premium, but could you give a bit more color on the split between those 2? If you say that 45% to 50% maybe of liftings now are plus or premium or kind of what's the split between those 2?

[Carl Johan Akesson, executive]

Yes, so we continue to stay clear of giving that sort of specific number. So the ambition is still the same. And what we can say, we haven't reached that. So plus is not a majority of listings. So we feel we're progressing as we planned, but there's definitely room to grow.

[Eric Wisham, analyst]

Okay, perfect. Thank you for taking my questions and best of luck, CJ.

[Carl Johan Akesson, executive]

Thank you.

[Operator]

There are no more questions from telephone participants at this time.

[Cecilia Beck-Friis, executive]

Okay. So thank you for listening in and have a great summer. Thank you. Bye-bye.