Scout24 SE

XETRA:G24

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Operator]

Good day, and welcome to the Scout24 First Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Ursula. Please go ahead.

[Ursula Querette, executive]

Welcome, everyone, to Scout24's Q1 2022 Results Call. My name is Ursula Querette, and I am Head of Investor Relations and Treasury at Scout24. As usual, we have Tobias Hartmann, our CEO; and Dirk Schmelzer, our CFO, on this call. Tobi will kick off the presentation, and Dirk will dive deeper into our Q1 financials. These are now, for the first time, based on our new segmentation. Please note that previous year comparables are pro forma numbers. As always, we will conclude the call with a Q&A session. You can find today's presentation on our website under Financial Reports and Presentations. If you are using the web link we provided beforehand, you can also follow the presentation live. This session will be recorded and a replay will be made available as quickly as possible after the event. Please be aware of the disclaimer on Page 2.

And let us now turn to Page 3 where I hand it over to Tobi.

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

Thank you, Ursula, and welcome, everyone. At the start of our presentation, I want to remind you of our 5 value drivers, which we introduced at our Capital Markets Day in December last year. And I want to share with you, we are in full motion with regards to moving to the next level. As a quick recap, the 5 value drivers are: for Professional, the first value driver is our agent membership business is our core offering. Second value driver of seller leads that we sell directly to our core customers via the Realtor Lead Engine product or hand over to our immoverkauf24 partner agents who agreed to a commission split. The third value driver on the professional side is the mortgage business. where we aim for a strong mortgage lead engine together with providing mortgage advisory with our partners. For private, value driver #4 entails the plus consumer subscription products. And last but not least, the fifth value driver is to increase the number of landlords, which we keep in our system with the help of additional services provided via permitted day.

Our 5 value drivers are firing on all cylinders, thanks to our strategic focus on them. Let me update you on our key strategic initiatives in Q1. For value driver 1, we launched loyalty levers, which we already mentioned at the CMD. While the effects of these measures will materialize at a later stage, the aim is to increase customer satisfaction and decrease churn. Membership migration was completed last year, so we now worked on enhancing the underlying rate card mechanism and value proposition of each membership. As an example, you might have seen we renewed and enhanced our partnership with some of our largest core agent customers such as [ Coles, Frontal and Anglofurkove ], among others, to help them on their path to more effective digitization.

Value driver 2. For future seller lead growth, we work on optimizing the distribution between RLE and immoverkauf24, targeting 2,000 commission-based transactions in 2022. And we accelerated our marketing efforts across all channels. Regarding value driver 3, we are on track to build out our own mortgage advisory team, ramping it up from 2 advisers in Q1 to over 20 at the end of H1, i.e., more partners for our commission split mortgage product to then shift more and more leads.

Value Driver 4. Here, we were able to substantially increase the number of Plus subscribers. This is partly the result of an improved paywall and conversion efficiency, and there is still further optimization potential. We also reviewed the pricing of our Plus products in Q1 with the result of optimizing customer lifetime value versus merely driving customer acquisition.

With regards to value driver 5, Vermietet.de, we further integrated the offering into ImmoScout24 and vice versa, i.e., making ImmoScout24 landlords to Vermietet.de subscribers and directing for Vermietet.de subscribers to ImmoScout24, platform-wise and branding wise. We are also in the process of developing monetization schemes. This includes testing different price points, but also subscription options. As you can see, we are full steam ahead to deliver against our 5 value drivers. All of them are contributing to our accelerated growth path.

On Page 4, we are showing how those 5 value drivers have contributed to our growth in Q1. This is fully in line with what we wanted to achieve. Let me go through them 1 by 1. Professional membership revenue has increased by 5.6% in Q1 year-on-year. Note, this is at the upper end of the range of our midterm 2026 target range of 4% to 6% CAGR. We grew seller leads revenue by more than 50% compared to the first quarter of 2021. This exceeds our midterm growth guidance of 30% to 40% annual growth on average until 2026. Please remember, when looking at ARPU growth, you need to consider this part as on top contribution as well.

Our mortgage business related revenue increased by 26%, which compares to a 2026 guidance of 18% to 20% growth per year. On the private side, the private subscription revenue without Vermietet.de grew by over 70%, with a healthy margin above midterm guidance of 26% to 28% average growth per year. With regards to Vermietet.de, we grew the number of registered units on the platform by 27% compared to the previous quarter at the end of last year. Multiply that by 4 to get an estimate of the annual growth run rate. Vermietet.de has only been a part of this Scout24 family since May 2021. Therefore, we are showing quarterly growth.

Our goal remains to reach 4.5 million registered units by the end of 2026. For your reference, this requires an average annual growth rate of circa 55% starting from the September number we showed you at the CMD. We are fully on track to achieve this.

Page 5 now shows you our strong performance in Q1. In line with our new segmentation structure reporting, we have also adjusted the KPIs score board. Along with group numbers, it shows professional customer segment KPIs and those of the private customer segment. At group level, Q1 revenue totaled EUR 107.9 million, a 15.1% increase over the same quarter in the previous year. This is the highest growth rate of ImmoScout24 since 2015. Ordinary operating EBITDA of the group came out at EUR 58.6 million, representing a margin of 54.4% and a growth over Q1 2021 of 6.5%. To give you a sense how that number comes together. If we excluded Vermietet.de and Propstack, ordinary operating EBITDA would come out circa EUR 1 million higher at EUR 59.7 million at a margin of 55.7% and a growth of 8.5% over Q1 2021.

Our professional customer subscription revenue increased by 11.5% to EUR 64 million in Q1. This impressive growth is built, a, on solid professional customer growth of circa 3% to more than 20,800 as well as, b, on an 8% higher ARPU with this increased customer base. On the private side, subscription revenue, including Vermietet.de rose by more than 75% to EUR 13.8 million. This was fueled by growth of more than 85% to over 280,000 private customers. Private ARPU, on the other hand, decreased to EUR 16.20. This is due to the longer subscription duration, which we have implemented over the last couple of months. That resulted in slightly lower revenue per month per user, but on the upside and in line with our strategy, we increased customer lifetime value with a better visibility over the next 12 months.

Dirk will now provide more detail on our financial performance at group level and for each of the segments.

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Thank you, Tobi, and welcome, everyone, also from my side. Slide 6 presents our new reporting structure and reflects well what Tobi said at the beginning of the call. Our Q1 growth accelerated on the back of the 5 value drivers we presented at the Capital Markets Day across all segments. The 11.8% revenue growth in the Professional segment is based on a strong core membership business, plus especially seller leads fueled the growth with additional tailwinds from an enhanced mortgage lead business.

Including respective holding costs, the ordinary operating EBITDA margin of the Professional segment came in at 60%. The Private segment showed a revenue growth of 27% in quarter 1, strongly backed by the private subscription revenue, which grew by almost 77%, including Vermietet.de, as mentioned before, while private PPA slightly increased. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin of the Private segment, including the allocated holding cost was at 47.7% in Q1 2022. This margin reflects the higher selling cost for the integrated credit check, which comes with more Plus products. It has an increased cost of goods sold, if you will. This is being mitigated in the future by higher revenue over a longer time horizon per customer.

It also reflects the investments into Vermietet.de. The Media & Other segment revenue increased by 7.5% in Q1 '22. This includes the ImmoScout24 Austria business, which grew strongly by 14.5% as well as our CRM business, FLOWFACT and Propstack, which grew by 11.5%. The third-party media business showed declining revenues. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin of the Media & Other segment fell by 5.5 percentage points to 29.4%.

Let's turn to Page 7 and to the Professional segment. As a reminder, the professional subscription ARPU takes into account. The residential and commercial core membership revenues and the revenue from seller leads such as the Realtor Lead Engine and immoverkauf24, all divided by the number of professional customers. These customers include our core customers and those immoverkauf agents who concluded a transaction in the respective period.

Concerning the quarter 1 professional ARPU, which is free of inorganic effects, we see an increase of 8% year-on-year from EUR 947 to EUR 1,023. Driven by a combination of customer growth, rate cards and product upgrades for the membership business and additionally, the very strong seller leads business, the subscription revenue grew substantially by 11.5%. Increased marketing spend contributed to get more leads into the funnel and improved lead qualification resulted in a better in-fund conversion.

While Professional PPA business remained flat, the mortgage business increased by more than 26% from EUR 3.5 million to EUR 4.4 million. This was achieved by increased marketing as well as an improved algorithm, which led to further enhanced lead quality. Overall, this is resulting in an ordinary operating EBITDA of EUR 42.8 million, a 2.6% increase compared to last year. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin came in at 60%, which is 5.4 percentage points lower, mainly due to the additional marketing investments.

On Page 8, let's have a look at the private segment and resulting ARPU. The year-on-year increase in the private segment revenue in the first quarter 2022 was 27% up to EUR 28.2 million. The subscription revenue grew even stronger with 76.6% to EUR 13.8 million, which now accounts for nearly half of the segment revenue. Customers increased by 86.6% from 152,000 in Q1 '21 to 283,000 in Q1 '22. The strong development of paying customers and the extended lifetime led to a slightly lower ARPU of EUR 16.20 in Q1 2022 compared to EUR 17.10 in Q1 last year. This is reflecting that the new customers pay lower monthly subscriptions, mainly because they subscribe to longer periods, which is in line with what we want to achieve.

The EBITDA contribution from ordinary operating activities from the private segment increased by 26.2%, in line with revenues to EUR 13.4 million in Q1 '22. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin came in at 47.4%, which is on a comparable level to Q1 '21 with 47.7%.

Turning to Page 9. Let us go through the main ordinary operating items. And note that this includes growth investments that are naturally affecting our margin temporarily. I will go a bit deeper into these on the following page. Own work capitalized increased by 30% to EUR 7.3 million in Q1. This translates into a capitalization ratio of 6.7%, which is above our target ratio of around 6%. This has mainly to do with capitalized developments and integration projects at Vermietet.de, which came on top of other accelerated product innovation efforts. However, I expect that by the end of 2022, the capitalization ratio will be near our target again.

Personnel costs increased by 10.8%, mainly due to integration of Vermietet.de employees and regular increases in wages. A significant portion of the temporary growth investment is in marketing. The higher marketing expenses reflect our strategic focus to generate valuable homeowner contacts through search engine optimization, search engine advertising and performance marketing. With these leads, our agent customers can digitally accelerate their mandate acquisition efforts eventually leading to more transactions.

Our marketing expenses increased by 69.8% to EUR 13.7 million in a year-on-year comparison. This also includes expenses for TV and online advertising. The year-on-year growth in IT cost by 35.3% to EUR 5.3 million results from the integration of Vermietet.de and increased AWS costs. Selling costs increased mainly due to the offered SCHUFA service integrated into an increased number of Plus subscriptions. I already elaborated on that before. Putting all together, we get to a 6.5% higher ordinary operating EBITDA of EUR 58.6 million in Q1 '22. The resulting margin is at 54.4%.

Coming to Page 10. This provides you with an update on our temporary strategic growth investments. We are focusing on high impact, high return on invest growth within the framework of the 5 value drivers. In the first quarter of '22, 11.5% of the operating effects or about EUR 6.5 million were invested in future growth and can be classified as temporary investments. That is exactly in line with the investments announced at the Capital Markets Day of around EUR 26 million for a full deployment within 1 whole year.

Adjusting for these temporary investments, the ordinary operating EBITDA margin, excluding these effects, comes out at 60%. You can see that we focused the investments along our value drivers 2 to 5. Most of the investments, in fact, contribute to value driver 2 the seller leads business and value driver 5 Vermietet.de. We invested in particular, into marketing, affiliate and performance marketing spend to generate leads for Realtor Lead Engine and immoverkauf24, but also for mortgage. Rolling out the business of Vermietet.de and getting as many units on the platform as possible is 1 of the key challenges in '22. That requires investments in the staff base of Vermietet.de in marketing and also in infrastructure investments, which appear within IT costs. As evidenced in Q1, our growth investments translate into catalyzed value-accretive growth.

Let's turn to Page 11, where you see the items below the ordinary operating EBITDA. First point to mention here, nonoperating costs increased by about 82% to EUR 5 million in the first quarter 2022. The increase is mainly due to higher M&A cost and a higher share-based compensation. The reported EBITDA of EUR 53.6 million in Q1 is 2.5% higher in a year-on-year comparison. Depreciation amortization decreased significantly by 43.3% due to the termination of the purchase price allocation amortization of the ImmoScout24 customer base, which overcompensates the higher nonoperating effects. This leads to an over proportionate and sustainable growth in EBIT of 18.2% to EUR 46.1 million.

The financial result of minus EUR 16.6 million is driven by the negative performance of our managed liquidity due to negative returns in the equity and interest rate markets. Since the sale of AutoScout, the overall performance of the managed liquidity of minus 0.38% as of 31st of March, has nonetheless still outperformed the ECB deficit facility rate of minus 0.5%. With a higher negative financial result and a lower tax expense, the reported net income decreased by 17.7% in Q1 '22. Adjusted for nonoperating effects, the EPS amounted to EUR 0.44 in Q1, which is 30% higher than the year before and perfectly leads over to the message on the next page.

On Page 12, we would like to highlight our earnings growth in combination with our share buyback program translates into a higher attractive shareholder return profile. So what you have is the best of both worlds. On the 1 hand, you have accelerating growth that is superior to our peer group. On the other hand, you have a highly attractive shareholder remuneration program consisting of ongoing share buybacks plus dividends at 50% of net income. We just launched another EUR 350 million share buyback program in March on the back of the roughly EUR 1.7 billion already returned to shareholders over the past 2 years until February. I would like to emphasize that our attractive earnings per share and dividend per share trajectory is set to continue in 2022. We are guiding for a 6% to 8% EBITDA growth. So naturally, we expect adjusted net income to increase as well compared to '21.

At the same time, due to the share buybacks in '21 and '22, including the ongoing EUR 350 million share buyback, the average number of shares will in any case, be clearly lower than in '21. Both these positive effects are adding up, translating into strong growth of both earnings per share and dividend per share in 2022. It goes without saying that we can only achieve these results whilst focusing strongly on our improved ESG measures.

Turning to Page 13. I'm very happy to share that we have made great progress in this area, reflected in a substantially improved Sustainalytics rating. We are very proud that we are now ranked first in our peer group, internet, software and services. How we are tackling the measurable success going forward, you can see on the left side of this slide. In recent years, we have implemented key levers to continuously reduce our energy consumption to the minimum possible. For example, we switched to green electricity, moved our data centers to the cloud. implemented a new travel policy, increased the proportion of electric cars in our fleet and constantly improved our databases.

In 2020, we were able to reduce our emissions by 43%. So we are well on track to achieve our goal of carbon neutrality by '25. For us, sustainability does not only include the environmental aspect. For over 20 years, we have been an agile, dynamic and multicultural company at which our employees make a difference. We aim to increase the proportion of women and nonbinary people in management positions from 37% to 42% until '25 and become even more diverse. Therefore, we have evolved our recruitment process to win even more talents for Scout24.

In '21, we add to conduct guidelines for business partners, suppliers and service providers to our code of conduct. These cover the environment, society, quality and governance. We want to increase the share of business partners, service providers and suppliers who accept the code of conduct or comply with its requirement by 80% for physical products and 40% for professional services by '22. This slide shows sustainability is part of our DNA, and we strive to reach the next level of sustainability.

Let me conclude our presentation on Page 14 by reiterating our outlook for '22. Based on our first quarter performance, we are confident that group revenue growth for the full year will be at the upper end of the forecasted range of 11% to 12%. Also, we are expecting ordinary operating EBITDA growth for the year '22 to come out at the upper end of the forecasted range of 6% to 8%.

With this, let me open the floor for your questions. Operator?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll go first to Chris Johnen with HSBC.

[Christopher Johnen, analyst]

Perfect I'd like to do them 1 by 1 if possible. So first on the guidance for the Private segment. I mean you did what was the 27% in Q1. Guidance for the year is 12% to 14%. You've clearly seen strong customer growth. Yes, I mean I would just like to pick your brain here. I don't see why there should be a strong deceleration. So would you agree that 12% to 14% looks somewhat cautious like that?

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Chris, thanks for the question. Yes, and I agree with you, we were positively surprised about the development in the private segment, over the first quarter. We see that development continuing into the second quarter. However, we would like to remind you that it's not only the number of customers, but also the ARPU in the customer lifetime where we are looking at for that segment. And therefore, we are not at a point in time where we would say we are reaffirming our guidance here. I think what we stated also in our announcement this morning, holds true for the segment. We are guiding towards the upper end, and we'll closely watch what's happening over the year.

[Christopher Johnen, analyst]

Got it. Second one, I know I asked this last time around on inflation. And not necessarily on your -- on the cost side of your business, but on the revenue side. So I know that the guidance you've given in particular for Driver 1, with respect to the 5% to 6% membership price growth was made before we had seen, let's say, more pronounced increase in the inflationary environment.

So I'm just trying to see if there is an update, whether you're more confident that this looks somewhat conservative as it's arguably easier to confront agents and say, look, general inflation is at more than 7% underlying core pricing growth of 5% to 6% doesn't look particularly strong. I'd just like to again pick your brain here.

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

Chris, this is Tobi. So you're correct in stating that when we held the CMD, it would be confident what exact inflationary policy we would see. But it's also important that this does not change our approach or plan with regards to pricing policy in general. Our pricing policy is value-based. We always approach this by providing better solutions, strong products and then convincing our partners. However, the point you made it's certainly helpful and don't hear in some of the discussions we are having with customers given the evidence overall price and cost increases. So we're certainly very open to that and to a certain extent, a little bit of a tailwind.

[Christopher Johnen, analyst]

Perfect. And the last one, in terms of the phasing for the year, I mean you've given a bit of a of an outlook with respect to Q2 being somewhat of a weaker quarter and Q4 being somewhat of a stronger quarter. Could you maybe talk about the current momentum? I mean, what have you seen in April? How do you see Q2 running with respect to maybe both Professional and Private?

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Chris, I believe you're targeting at the cost side here. As you have seen in my presentation, we have spent around EUR 6.5 million on our growth initiatives for the first quarter. That is exactly in line with what we said at the Capital Markets Day, where we are targeting EUR 26 million for the whole year. Now they are not fully equally loaded amongst the quarters. So what you will see is a higher investment in quarter 2 as we speak, slow ramp-up in Q3. And as you are used to covering our assets for a while, Q4 will be the strongest quarter in the year. And you can expect that for the remainder of the year.

Coming into April and early -- very early signs we're seeing from May. We're quite satisfied with the development. Everything is developing according to our plans. And we don't see any reason to change our plans with regards to that. So as you outlined perfectly in your question, Q2, slightly lower margin, Q3 starting to recover again and Q4 strong margin.

[Operator]

We'll take our next question from Lisa Yang with Goldman Sachs.

[Lisa Yang, analyst]

So I think just a follow-up to the previous question. I mean, you had a very strong start of the year at 15 and you're planning to invest more in Q2 and Q3. So I'm just wondering why that shouldn't drive an even stronger momentum for the rest of the year? Like if you're investing more, should we also expect revenue to tax rate. So I'm just trying to understand why is there a bit of a disconnect between revenue decelerating and EBITDA growth accelerating throughout the year? That's the first question.

The second question is on the Lead Engine business. It feels like a lot of the growth has come from the Realtor Lead Engine and actually, [indiscernible] sort of flat quarter-on-quarter or flattish quarter-on-quarter didn't grow much. So I'm just saying what's going on there because I thought you wanted to prioritize even the half '24. So do you expect that sort of mix to change throughout the year? And in sense of timing impact, which slowed the growth of local -- any color on that would be helpful.

And the third question is on the core agent membership. So you mentioned customer growth, rate card adjustments upselling. Could you give a bit more I mean, firstly, on the customer growth, like who are you taking share from? Do you think that customer growth could continue for the year? Given -- especially given the macro situation and this rate card adjustment, can you also give more detail in terms of what adjustments you have made, when did you make those adjustments? And should we see a continuous benefit for the rest of the year as well?

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Thanks, Lisa. Thanks for the questions. I think first and second question are deserving the same answer. It has a little bit to do with the fact that we are seeing the Realtor Lead that we are handing over to immoverkauf coming into revenues, 6 to 18 months afterwards. So what you are seeing is an increase of time between investment and revenue generation. And that also explains the shape of our margin as well as our revenue growth in 2022.

And if you look at -- you mentioned it rightly, the very healthy development of the Realtor Lead Engine, we saw a significant growth from immoverkauf here. We believe that 30% is a significant number. And what we also saw and that is creating the flywheel that we referred to at the Capital Markets Day. What this also helps us is to also generate more Realtor Lead that we are selling on a cost per lead model instead of a commission split model that you see here. So on both metrics and on both value drivers, we believe that we made very good progress, and we are right on target to achieve what we wanted to achieve with immoverkauf24 this year.

On your question around customers and memberships. You have seen that we've been growing customers by roughly 3%. Once again, quarter 1, '22 versus quarter 1 2021. We believe this is a good result that plays into our strategy, and that is a part of our strategy. And on top of that, we have been managing to slightly changed the mix in our rate cards towards more customers in the image edition and towards more customers in the acquisition edition.

So on the base edition, we're currently looking at 28% versus 30% we had there in the first quarter in 2021, and we also saw a movement in the image edition where we have now more than 52% of our overall customer base and the acquisition editions still holds at 20%. So it's a very healthy mix, but also creating some upside potential for the future when we are targeting 20% and more in our acquisition vision.

[Operator]

We'll take our next question from William Packer with BNP Paribas.

[William Packer, analyst]

Firstly, on immoverkauf24, could you share some specific data points for that asset rather than for the vendor lead bucket as a whole. So for IV24 revenue, the number of transactions facilitated the number of leads, et cetera?

Secondly, my understanding is that you pushed through a price increase in Q1 with your state agent customers. Could you talk through the size of the price increase, the number of agents affected and how agents have responded? You have all seen a pickup in churn or obviously, it's been an issue in the past.

And then finally, there's been plenty of speculation in the press regarding interest from private equity, obviously, as I mentioned in the release. Could you just remind us under what circumstances you would update the market? Is there a specific catalyst?

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Thanks very much, William. Let me start off with [indiscernible] then Tobi will elaborate on question 3. You were asking about the split on the Realtor Lead side and on the transaction-based side between immoverkauf24 and Realtor Lead Engine. So what you can see here is that the revenues with immoverkauf24 has been at EUR 3.3 million in the first quarter, and the revenues on the Realtor Lead Engine has been around EUR 8 million. However, we've managed to increase the overall amount of transaction on the immoverkauf to 450. And the average revenue Realtor Lead here is 7,200 -- sorry, the average revenue per commission split is 7,200. Because we're seeing around 40,000 leads that we are putting through the Realtor Lead Engine in the first quarter with an average revenue per lead of EUR 171. So quite healthy measures and quite healthy numbers that we're seeing here, helping us to grow forward.

Your second question was how have our agents reacted to our price increases. As Tobi outlined earlier on, we saw very positive reactions from our agent base on the changes we did in the first quarter, not because they like price increases, but because the value they get from our product. And that helped us to discuss with our agent base. Based on our value-based pricing strategy, to slightly improve pricing and slightly move them between the rate cards and help them to grow their business because that's what we're here to -- we're here to help our customers grow the business.

On the question around private equity interest, I would like to point to the fact that we are not commenting on that, but you are also asking under which circumstances we were taking that. And I think there is quite clear legal guidance in Germany around that. And when we are [ across within across ] by private equity company, what we have to do and rest assured that we, as a management team, will do what's in the best interest of the company and the shareholders. But apart from that, we wouldn't like to comment any further on that.

[Operator]

We'll take our next question from Miriam Adisa with Morgan Stanley.

[Miriam Adisa, analyst]

Firstly, just on private subscriptions. Just wondering specifically what has been pushing customers to take up the longer-term subscriptions? Have you made any adjustments on pricing there that's driving that? Or if you could just go into a bit more detail on the investment, I think you mentioned selling costs as investment driver. If you could just talk a bit about that in more detail. And then just broadly, how you're thinking about pricing on the subscription products as well, just given the strong customer growth you're seeing.

And then secondly, if you could just comment on the latest thoughts around the monetization Vermietet. I believe you've been doing a number of tests there. So if you could just give any feedback around those.

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

Miriam, it's Tobi. On the subscription piece, the elaboration is optimized more so around the payroll mechanics and also the duration and the terms of particularly the subscription. We're also testing different levers depending on the region where we have subscribers and where we are getting new subscribers on to the product. We will continue to do so and to be clear on this call. This is by far not the end of the road. So we have more to do. We are doing this well, but there's more to go, and we can still optimize a lot, and that's what we are financing.

And on the monetization piece, for Vermietet, we have just recently started to test different pieces. It's too early to disclose that here, what it will do. This should also remember, we've now fully integrated from a brand perspective or a funnel perspective for the traffic of integration. And we are now better and better understanding what different landlords we're getting onto the platform also from ImmoScout24 and what sort of campaign triggers it's in landlords to up on the platform and then register their units. So it's too early to really give significant or share significant details with the early innings of trying out different monetization and pricing levers.

[Operator]

We'll go next to Joe Barnet-Lamb with Credit Suisse.

[Joseph Barnet-Lamb, analyst]

A couple from me. Firstly, on the Private side. So Private saw strong top line and encouragingly strong margin as well. I wanted to ask about sort of the evolution of operational leverage within private. From my understanding, the most significant sort of cost associated with those subscriptions is the SCHUFA credit check. Correct me if I'm wrong in that. How often can a subscriber get a SCHUFA for credit check? And is it fair to say that everyone takes 1 upfront and then takes them infrequently or irregularly after that. I guess the point I'm sort of trying to get at here is, as the business progresses, does the effective margin get better because the main cost associated with it is upfront. That's sort of the first set of questions, if that's all right.

And then the second one, not entirely dissimilarly. When we look at the blend of seller lead, as it pertains to organically developed versus inorganically acquired, how has that shifted in 1Q? And can you talk a little bit about what you're doing to try to drive that blend towards organic?

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Okay. Let me start off with -- Joe, thanks for the questions. Let me start with the first 1 on the Private side and the operational leverage we have here. As we've been touching on answering the question from Miriam before, what we are doing here is a mixture between customer lifetime value optimization and pricing testing.

Now what we have been doing is we have increased versus Q1 last year. The average lifetime from 4 to 5 months. That means we have more customers that are eligible of having 2 to 3 SCHUFA inquiries during their lifetime. But what we are seeing, and that is really operational leverage and in favor of us is that the SCHUFA cost only represent a very minor effect because we are only seeing 1.2 queries per user on the average at the moment. So obviously, users are happy to start and continue their journey with the first credit check inside and then taking that forward.

So that helps us in line with a large amount of organic traffic we're getting on to that product to deliver on the margin, which is quite healthy as you rightly pointed out in your question.

On the question around the seller lease, I would hand over to Tobi.

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

It's still approximately the same what we told you, we think we believe in the past, a similar split, which is -- there's about 33% of organically generated and about 67% inorganically generated lease. So that hasn't changed much.

[Operator]

We'll take our next question from Fon Udomsilpa with RBC Capital Markets.

[Wassachon Fon Udomsilpa, analyst]

Two questions from me, please. So firstly, on the Professional segment. Looking at the membership revenue growth of 5.6%, could you provide us some qualitative comments around the growth rate of the residential and the commercial businesses and any color around the rate of agent growth or ARPU development for each business will be great, please.

And the second question is on Plus product. Could you provide some color around the current competition for the product, please? And remind us the competitive advantage of the MieterPlus and KauferPlus competitors?

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Okay. So Fon, thanks for pointing out the quite healthy development up to 5.6% the on the Professional segment. What paid into that is to one extent, the amount of rate cards and price adjustments we could do here. And secondly, the amount of new customers we're getting in. As I said earlier on, we're quite happy with 3.3% customer growth in the first quarter, and we continue to do that. And apart from that, on this 5.6%, the remainder is moving in the rate cards plus value-based price increases that we have taken through the first quarter of 2022.

On the Plus products, your question was, what is driving that? And how is competition around that? Frankly, I have to say there is not much competition around that in Germany. Why is that the case? It's simply the case because we are the largest real estate portal in Germany with the highest amount of sale assets. And that's the reason why our BuyersPlus+ product is performing well. We have more than 30,000 subscribers on that right now. And we are the portal with the highest quality of leads that can be generated for landlords. And therefore, we are not seeing much on the competition. What we are seeing is happy landlords and happy tenants.

[Operator]

We'll take our next question from Marius Fuhrberg with Warburg Research.

[Marius Fuhrberg, analyst]

Actually, one -- just one remaining from my side. With regards to the liquidity management, which had quite a negative impact this quarter. You give us an update on how much is still managed in there? And what kind of products are you investing there? And I mean, considering that this is not really your core business and the current times are not really the most safe times to invest in such post, guess. Would you consider repaying some debt with -- or out of these funds that are currently in the liquidity management?

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Question. We will be paying back our term loan with EUR 100 million out of the existing EUR 290 million that we're still holding as liquidity in our assets, which are managed by Allianz on the 1 hand and Landesbanken would be on the other hand. And yes, you are right, Q1 was not the best quarter to money. However, looking at the time from initiation of our more than EUR 1 billion investment to those funds, and comparing that to the amount we would have paid and would have negative financial results on our balance sheet over that period. We are still positive here. So yes, we saw a downside in Q1 but looking at the overall time frame, we have managed the liquidity for our shareholders quite well and have outperformed the negative interest rate of the European Central Bank.

[Marius Fuhrberg, analyst]

Sure. I mean I was not downing that because in the past, it you quite well, I guess. But in my perception times have changed a little bit, especially since last quarter, and that's why I was going to this question.

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Absolutely fair point, Marius, and also an unusual statement by CFO, maybe, but I'm not a friend of having too much liquidity on the balance sheet. And that's why we are repaying debt. And as you know, we are in an ongoing share buyback program. And we are investing the rest of the amount of the AutoScout transaction liquidity that we're having for those share buyback programs. So expect us to slowly decrease and reach our overall leverage guidance that we gave out at the Capital Markets Day.

[Operator]

We'll take our next question from Sarah Simon with Berenberg.

[Sarah Simon, analyst]

Yes. It's just one question. If your trajectory remains similar in terms of revenues, and you end up towards the -- or let's say, above the high end of the guidance range. To what extent are you focused on the EBITDA range or would you be prepared to invest more aggressively and just deliver the same EBITDA range but a lower margin as a percentage or better revenues?

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Sarah, thanks for the question. We feel comfortable with the EUR 26 million we announced to our shareholders, and we feel comfortable for the remainder of the year with that. And that answers your question. If there is additional revenue upside, you will certainly also see an improvement on margin.

[Operator]

We'll take our next question from Craig Abbott with Kepler Cheuvreux.

[Craig Abbott, analyst]

One more follow-up from my side, please. I just -- maybe just misunderstanding from myself, but I'm just trying to understand a little bit the apparent disconnect between the strong increase in the marketing spend and strong development in nearly all of your KPIs in the quarter on the one hand. But on the other hand, the further declines or stagnant traffic figures, if you could maybe help me understand a little bit better why there doesn't seem to be -- there seems to be a pretty good disconnect there.

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Craig, thanks for outlining that and pointing to that. I have to say, as a market leader with more that 113 million visits a month, it's tough to increase that number. And starting from that, I would say it's not a disconnect. It's just -- we reached a certain limit here.

Secondly, if you look at the figures, we still managed to increase some of those unique monthly visitors but what has come in between is a war in the Ukraine based on the aggression from Russia, we saw here. And that has taken a lot of eyeballs to more important points in the world than getting the next real estate in Germany. We perfectly understand that, but it doesn't have any impact on our strategic decisions nor our operational decisions to invest money into the right initiatives.

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

If I may add, Craig, it's Tobi. Points towards the strength of our business model and the strategy we're pursuing, which is we have different levers of monetization, and we're pulling them and we're putting it all triggers and creating this ecosystem has a phenomenal advantage, which is we're creating all these subgroups of interested parties, we do have their customized data. We have their accounts. We have plus subscribers can be in touch with them. So we can still do monetization and transactions and be a little bit more independent of what's happening overall. So I think that's one of the advantages that we've been working on behind the scenes.

[Operator]

We'll take our next question from Nizla Naizer with Deutsche Bank.

[Fathima-Nizla Naizer, analyst]

I just have a couple of questions remaining. Firstly, there with rising inflation of this year of potentially recession in sort of Europe and Germany. And could you give us some color on how you as management think about this and how it could affect your business? And are you worried about changing consumer behavior on the back of this and/or fewer transactions in the real estate market in Germany. So some color as to how you think about this would be great.

And secondly, could you remind us again what your idea sort of target leverage is? And the EUR 350 million, your new buyback, is this sort of part of your leverage management? And would you still consider opportunistic M&A? Or are you doing this buyback because you feel like there isn't much out there to go after? Some color there would be great.

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

Thank you. Yes, on the overall situation in Germany, I think there's a few things that you probably all know but yet, we don't know how they're going to play out and how do we prepare for it so that's tight approach this. Inflation is probably something that won't go away. We know that. We also know that there's an increasing level of mortgage rates going up. Now one could say that's actually a negative impact to our business because it's harder to get financing and there's higher financing costs, on the other hand, and that's the flip side, which could be a positive thing. It also revamps our marketplace for marketing properties and for being able to get at least a little bit more supply in terms of -- in times where we've had for a very long period, a lack of supply.

The next thing is the rising energy prices. I think homeowners as well as landlords and tenants would only see the full picture once they get to the bills for 2022. I think there's going to be quite a bit of a surprise, which is a huge impact on people being able to analyze what they can afford going forward. It also will potentially drive a change in head in terms of what I'm looking for, what it will shape in terms of making moving plan or sticking to half. So in a nutshell how we pave through it, we think either way, we won't be impacted that heavily, but we are observing it. And if it may have a dampening effect on the one side, it may also have a positive effect on the other side.

So far, [indiscernible] would be fare pretty well. And we do see that people have more and more of a need for really understanding what's going on in the marketplace and they're using is [indiscernible] for just that.

The second question, I will hand it over to Dirk.

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Yes, it's not. On the leverage guidance, we stick to what we said at the Capital Markets Day. So there is a midterm target of 0 here. And I also outlined various occasions that we are feeling very, very confident with our ability to delever again given the cash conversion of the business, so from time to time, you might see us at minus 0.5, minus 1. But it will always be returning back to 0.

And on M&A, yes, there's lots of various targets out there. And as I said on earlier occasions as well, those targets can help us to deliver on our 5 value drivers. We might consider it. At the moment, we feel very comfortable with the direction we've taken and with the direction the year has taken. So there's no imminent M&A that we are looking at while at the same time, I have to say, that even if we did, we have an ability to go up to 3.5 to 4x leverage. That's also what we outlined at the Capital Markets Day.

[Operator]

That will conclude our question-and-answer session. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

[Ursula Querette, executive]

Yes. Thank you very much for joining this call, this Q1 call. If there's any remaining questions, please don't hesitate to contact the IR team under irscout24.com. Thank you, and bye-bye.

[Operator]

That will conclude today's call. We appreciate your participation.