Scout24 SE

XETRA:G24

Earnings Call Analysis

Scout24 Reports Strong Q1 Growth and Confirms 2024 Guidance

Scout24 started 2024 with an impressive 12% revenue growth in the first quarter, driven by strong performance in agent membership and private subscriptions. The professional customer base grew to 22,200 subscribers, while the private subscriber base hit 413,000, a 21% increase. Operating EBITDA also rose by 17% with margin expansion to 58.4%. Despite muted growth in some revenue lines, adjusted EPS increased by 18% to EUR 0.67. Scout24 confirmed its 2024 guidance of 9-11% revenue growth and an operating EBITDA margin of about 61%, signaling strong confidence in sustaining its growth trajectory for the year.

A Strong Start to 2024

The company commenced 2024 with impressive metrics. Revenue grew by 12% in the first quarter, largely propelled by robust performance from the agent membership and private subscriptions. This growth, however, was slightly tempered by normalizing PPA growth and subdued demand for leads. The average customer base grew to 22,091, reaching over 22,200 by March. The company is optimistic about its membership business, which saw revenue grow by 10% due to customer growth and price increases, evidencing high demand for their products.

Financial Growth and Profitability

Ordinary operating EBITDA saw a significant 17% year-on-year increase, leading to a margin expansion of 2.4 percentage points. Adjusted EPS also grew by 18% to EUR 0.67. The total revenue for the first quarter reached EUR 136.1 million, representing 11.7% growth from the previous year. These figures reaffirm the company's financial guidance for 2024, projecting a revenue growth of 9% to 11% and an ordinary operating EBITDA margin around 61%.

Expansion in Different Segments

The Professional segment showed a remarkable 12.8% revenue growth, including contributions from Sprengnetter. Professional ARPU rose by 4%, growing from EUR 1,088 to EUR 1,131. The Private segment also reported a 9.3% revenue increase, driven by a 19.8% growth in subscription revenues, although more moderate PPA growth was observed. The Media & Other segment recorded an 11.4% increase, with substantial contributions from their Austrian business, CRM portfolio, and third-party advertisements.

Guidance and Market Strategy

The company anticipates stronger revenue growth in the second quarter compared to the first quarter. However, due to robust comparables and absorbing the lower-margin Sprengnetter business, EBITDA growth may be more modest. They are committed to maintaining profitability, forecasting continued high demand for memberships and private subscriptions throughout the year. Revenues from PPA Professional are expected to face challenges, suggesting no significant growth compared to the 2023 baseline.

Operational Efficiency

Despite absorbing Sprengnetter, the company increased its ordinary operating EBITDA margin to 58.4% for the first quarter, up by 2.4 percentage points. Even with a reported increase of 20.1% in non-operating effects, mainly due to higher share-based compensation costs, the company remains focused on continued efficiency and strategic growth. D&A charges rose by 19.9%, attributed to Sprengnetter.

Engagement and Market Position

The homeowner base increased to 1.3 million users, with monthly active users growing by 77% year-on-year. The visitor rate per month jumped to 2.5x compared to 1.7x in March 2023. High engagement levels are linked to the broader real estate market trends and successful implementation of innovative products like the modernizer calculator and digital appraisal reports.

Conclusion: Confidence in 2024

Entering 2024 with solid metrics, the company is executing its strategy effectively. The real estate market in Germany is showing signs of gradual recovery, positively impacting platform activity. Despite a challenging environment, the company is confident in hitting its 2024 targets, driven primarily by strong performance in its core business and strategic market positioning.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Scout24 Q1 2024 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Filip Lindvall, Vice President, Group Strategy and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Filip Lindvall, executive]

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Scout24 first quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Filip Lindvall, and I'm Vice President, Group Strategy and Investor Relations at Scout24.

With me on the call today are Tobias Hartmann, our CEO; and Dirk Schmelzer, our CFO.

Tobi will kick off the presentation, and Dirk will dive deeper into our financial performance. As usual, we will conclude the call with a Q&A session. You can find today's presentation on our website under Financial Reports and Presentations. This session will be recorded and a replay will be made available on our website as quickly as possible after the event. Please take note of the disclaimer on Page 2. Tobi, now over to you.

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

Thank you, Filip, and welcome, everyone.

Let's go straight to Page 3 of our presentation, and let me summarize the key takeaways from our first quarter results. I am pleased to announce that we started off 2024 with 12% revenue growth for the first quarter. Growth was driven by very strong performance in our agent membership and private subscriptions businesses, offset by normalizing PPA growth and continued soft demand for leads.

Let's review our key growth drivers for the quarter. Our membership business grew revenue strongly by 10%, driven by a mix of pricing and continued customer growth. We are particularly excited about growing our professional customer base in this challenging market. The average customer base in the quarter was 22,091. The number increased even further in March. We ended the month with over 22,200 subscribers. During our Capital Markets Day in February, we spoke about the strength of our membership business and the great demand we are seeing for our products. This quarter is another testament to that. Our private subscriber business continues to maintain impressive growth rates off a larger base. In February, we crossed the 400,000 subscriber mark, ending the quarter with an average subscriber base of 413,000. This represents a growth rate of 21%. The strong growth in our core business was offset by more muted growth dynamics in other revenue lines, which experienced a more challenging quarter as transaction levels are only slowly recovering.

Moving from revenues to ordinary operating EBITDA, we are very pleased to continue delivering strong operating leverage. Ordinary operating EBITDA grew strongly by 17% for the quarter, resulting in meaningful margin expansion of 2.4 percentage points year-on-year. Adjusted EPS came in at EUR 0.67 for the quarter, growing 18% year-on-year. We are also pleased to confirm our guidance for 2024 of 9% to 11% revenue growth and an ordinary operating EBITDA margin of about 61%.

Now let's turn to Page 4 of the presentation to look at our first quarter metrics. On a group level, our revenue for the quarter reached EUR 136.1 million, representing 11.7% growth year-on-year. Ordinary operating EBITDA came in at EUR 79.5 million, up 16.5% year-on-year.

In the Professional segment, subscription revenues increased by 11.7% to EUR 79.1 million. This was mainly driven by continued strong membership growth and the consolidation of Sprengnetter. Our membership business has carried its momentum from 2023 into 2024, and we are very pleased with the dynamics we are seeing in the business. We continue to gain customers in this challenging market, growing by 1.8% and bringing the total number to 22,091. Professional ARPU increased by 4.0% to EUR 131. In the private segment, subscription revenue was strong with 19.8% growth, maintaining the momentum from the fourth quarter last year. Subscriber growth was at 20.8%, accelerating, compared to the fourth quarter 2023. We ended this quarter with 413,000 subscribers, which marks a significant milestone for our unique business as we crossed the 400,000 subscriber base. On another positive note, we saw the buyer plus subscription product stabilizing and growing month-on-month for the first time since many quarters. Private ARPU declined slightly as more subscribers opt for the longer subscription period product, which increases lifetime value.

Moving beyond the financials for the quarter, I would like to provide an update on how we are progressing with the execution of our strategy as presented at our Capital Markets Day. We continue to drive interconnectivity of our unique 3-sided marketplace, while focusing on innovating new products for our stakeholders. Let me give you a couple of examples. For our professional customers, our new memberships for agents are well received. We are pleased with the uptake of the new memberships by our customer base, both in absolute numbers and the mix of the different packages. The new additions aimed to drive interconnectivity within our ecosystem as it enables our professional customers to consume much larger parts of our product portfolio than before. Some of the products require usage of our newly launched digital currency, which creates further attachment to our ecosystem.

Now let's talk about our homeowners. We continue to attract new homeowners to our platform, growing our base by another 0.1 million to 1.3 million users. Our homeowner base is not just growing, but also showing an increased level of engagement. As an example, the monthly active users grew by 77% year-on-year and visits per month in March 2024 were 2.5x compared to 1.7x for the same month in 2023. Obviously, the engagement is also somewhat correlated to the development of the real estate market. Within the homeowner hub, we are seeing good uptake from recent innovation products such as the modernizer calculator, which then turns into an ESG lead as well as our new digital appraisal reports for professional landlords. Products such as PPA and seller leads being increasingly triggered from the homeowner hub environment is also a clear indication of high engagement.

Before I hand it over to Dirk, I would like to conclude the first quarter as follows: We are off to a solid start in 2024. Our core business has carried its momentum from 2023 into 2024 and is performing well. We are tracking well in line with the growth targets we communicated at the Capital Markets Day. The real estate market in Germany is showing signs of slow recovery. We know agents had a solid start into the year. This is confirmed by the increased activity we are seeing on our platform with respect to sale objects. We are fully on track executing our strategy laid out at the Capital Markets Day. Our guidance for 2024 remains unchanged.

And with that, I hand it over to Dirk.

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Thank you, Tobi, and welcome, everyone.

On Slide 5, you see the first quarter 2024 year-on-year revenue growth and ordinary operating EBITDA margins for our 3 business segments. We are pleased that our segments continue to grow at healthy rates with increasing profitability, continuing the track record from 2023. The Professional segment grew revenues by 12.8% in the first quarter, driven by strong performance in core memberships and the inclusion of Sprengnetter. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin expanded by 1.2 percentage points to 63.2% despite absorbing Sprengnetter's lower-margin business. This improvement is due to our favorable product mix and continuous efficiency improvements in our seller leads and mortgage businesses.

In the Private segment, we continued to witness strong demand for Plus subscription products, offset by slower growth from PPA as revenues normalized on a high level. Overall, this resulted in a 9.3% increase in revenues. Ordinary operating EBITDA margin for the private segment increased by 3.9 percentage points to 50.8% as we continue to scale the business.

The Media & Other segment experienced an 11.4% increase in revenues. Growth was driven by all 3 verticals: Our Austrian business, CRM portfolio and third-party advertising. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin for the Media and Other segment displayed a significant improvement of 6 percentage points, reaching 45.4% due to profitable growth and efficiency in our CRM portfolio. On a group level, we delivered a margin of 58.4% for the first 3 months while absorbing the dilution from Sprengnetter.

Let's turn to Page 6 for a closer look at the Professional segment. In the first quarter of 2024, revenue in the Professional segment grew by 12.8% year-on-year, including Sprengnetter. Growth was driven by continued healthy growth from our subscription business, which grew by 11.7%, fueled by strong membership growth and consolidation of Sprengnetter.

Membership growth of 9.8% was once again strong and well in line with the recent targets we communicated at our Capital Markets Day. We also managed to continue expanding our agent customer base with year-on-year growth of 1.8%. Our sales force continues to execute well in this challenging market. Demand for seller leads and mortgage remains soft, and revenues were down organically in the first quarter. Reported growth for seller leads was 24.3% due to consolidation of Sprengnetter.

Mortgage revenues increased by 66.9% also due to Sprengnetter consolidation. On an organic basis, revenue development was also negative due to continued soft demand for leads. Professional ARPU increased 4%, rising from EUR 1,088 to EUR 1,131. Strong core ARPU for membership was offset by negative impact from seller leads. Professional paper ad revenues declined by 20.1% in the first quarter. This development is driven by our ongoing strategy to migrate customers into membership contracts. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin improved to 63.2% in the third quarter, up 1.2 percentage points year-on-year despite absorbing the dilution from Sprengnetter. As you can tell from the numbers, we are continuing to gradually scale profitability nicely in our Professional segment despite a challenging market environment.

On Page 7, let's take a closer look at the Private segment. The segment grew by 9.3% in the first quarter, reaching EUR 38.1 million of revenue. This marks a deceleration compared to last year as continued strong subscription growth is offset by PPA revenues normalizing on a high level and a softer growth of other revenue lines. This is in line with our strategy to balance growth and profitability. Subscription revenues grew by 19.8% in the first quarter, maintaining its strong growth momentum from the fourth quarter last year. Growth continues to be driven by new customer acquisitions. The average number of customers for the first quarter exceeded 413,000, representing a 20.8% year-on-year increase. PPA revenues grew by 5.5% year-on-year on the back of a very strong performance in 2023 and listing volume growth normalizing at high levels in the first quarter of 2024. The gradual normalized PPA growth rates during 2024 is something reflected during earnings calls end of last year. The private ARPU decreased slightly by 0.9% in the first quarter as more customers are opting for the longer-duration subscription products. Other revenues declined by 13% in the first quarter, driven by lower demand for relocation leads and credit checks. Our ordinary operating EBITDA margin expanded to 50.8% in the first quarter, up by 3.9 percentage points, driven by scale in our subscription business.

Let's turn to Page 8 to review the main ordinary operating items. Our own work capitalized decreased by 14.8% in the first quarter to EUR 5.3 million as we continue to complete various development and integration projects. As a percentage of revenue, we were at 3.9% in the first quarter. These developments are in line with the communication we gave at the Capital Markets Day about continuing to focus on efficiency and coming out of the investment phase. Operating cost increased by 3.4% in the first quarter, driven by continued operating efficiency, offset by the consolidation of Sprengnetter. On a like-for-like basis, we saw a year-on-year decline. Personnel costs increased by 8%, mainly due to the inclusion of Sprengnetter. Pro forma, excluding Sprengnetter, personnel costs were even down year-on-year. Marketing costs increased by 3.5% in the first quarter as we continue to invest in brand and offline marketing campaigns to drive brand awareness. IT costs decreased by 9.3% year-on-year as we continue to find efficiencies and focus on driving down vendor spend. Selling costs decreased by 1.8% in the first quarter. Continued growth in the Private segment and the consolidation of Sprengnetter was offset by lower cost for our leads business as we continue to exit cooperation agreements.

Other operating expenses increased by 3.7% in the first quarter due to a slight increase in the use of external resources and vendor inflation. Due to the continued strong revenue momentum, a favorable product mix and operating efficiency I just outlined, ordinary operating EBITDA increased strongly by 16.5% in the first quarter. Ordinary operating EBITDA margin reached 58.4% for the quarter, representing solid margin expansion of 2.4 percentage points.

Let's turn to Page 9, where you see the items below ordinary operating EBITDA. In the first quarter, nonoperating effects amounted to EUR 12 million, increasing 20.1% year-on-year. This development was due to increased costs for share-based compensation, offset by lower charges for reorganization. D&A charges in the first quarter were EUR 9.6 million, increasing by 19.9% due to the acquisition and consolidation of Sprengnetter. Basic EPS rose under-proportionately by 6.4% to EUR 0.54 for the first quarter as the improved financial result was meaningfully offset by higher taxes. This was due to positive one-off tax effects in the first quarter of 2023. Adjusted EPS continues to grow strongly, up 18.3% in the first quarter to EUR 0.67. The number of shares outstanding decreased by 100,000 shares to EUR 73.5 million.

Turning to the guidance on Page 10. Based on the financial performance of the first quarter and unchanged outlook for the rest of the year, we are pleased to confirm our financial guidance for 2024. As a reminder, our guidance for 2024 assumes 9% to 11% revenue growth and ordinary operating EBITDA margin of about 61%.

To give you some more context on what we are planning for the remainder of the year. We do expect revenue growth to be stronger in the second quarter compared to the first quarter. Regarding profitability, I would like to remind you that the second quarter of 2023 was exceptionally strong with 26% ordinary operating EBITDA growth and 64% margin as efficiency measures kicked in and marketing costs were very low that quarter. This tough comparable in combination with absorbing the dilution from Sprengnetter consolidation will make ordinary operating EBITDA growth more muted in the second quarter of 2024, however, not changing the full year profitability outlook. We continue to prioritize profitability over revenue growth when running our leads business throughout the year.

In terms of dynamics for our key revenue lines, we are assuming the following for the remainder of the year: Continued high demand for memberships and private subscriptions. PPA Professional remaining a headwind throughout the year. PPA private revenue levels remaining at high level, but we are not assuming meaningful growth compared to 2023 revenue baseline.

Demand for leads remain soft and is most likely normalizing over the course of the year, slightly lagging the recovery of the transaction market.

I would like to conclude that we feel absolutely confident about our guidance, both revenue and profitability based on the strong momentum in our core business.

And with that, let's open the line for questions. We would appreciate if you could limit your questions to 2 per speaker. Operator, over to you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Joe Barnet-Lamb with UBS.

[Joseph Barnet-Lamb, analyst]

Excellent. Yes, 2 for me. So firstly, you mentioned marketing was up 3.2% in the period due to these tailored investments in ImmoScout24 brand campaigns. Can you give some color around these investments, and how we should consider sort of a run rate marketing going forward if this is a new level, or if there's any phasing in there? And then second question, your year-on-year year ARPU growth in Professional was sort of somewhat softer. And I think you specifically cite lower APRUs from new customers. Can you help us understand how much of an impact that sort of blend is having, i.e., what year-on-year ARPU growth for existing customers would have been? Any color you can give around that would be great.

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Okay. Thanks, Joe. And I start with the last one, which is the question on ARPU from new customers. I think in total, you saw an ARPU growth of 4%. If we do a like-for-like comparison, ARPU would have grown purely organically at the level of around 9% to 10%. And another testament for that is the strong growth that you saw in our membership product, which is basically reflecting our nearer and closer ARPU definition of just membership ARPUs. So nonetheless, that we added 2% customers to our base, ARPU growth remained quite healthy. On the marketing spend, I would think that, as we outlined in the presentation as well as in the narrative to the Q1 figures, there is an impact from the brand campaign we had, we are currently looking at our marketing spend over the year. What we can say is that we are orienting ourselves versus last year's levels, but we will not give more specific guidance around that. I think what we said around profitability and also with the -- with regards to the development of our marketing and selling costs that should suffice for you to give -- to have enough fruit to outline the remainder of the year. As I said, operating leverage is developing quite healthy.

[Operator]

The next question is from Will Packer with BNP Exane.

[William Packer, analyst]

Firstly, if we adjust Q1 and also Q4 for the Sprengnetter deal, organic revenue growth for the group has slowed towards mid-single digit, let's say, maybe a little bit back Q4. You talked to being absolutely confident about your guidance. And clearly, last year, you delivered very well. Could you just talk us through the factors that drive the acceleration in the second half of the year from an organic perspective, PPA muted seller-lead muted, just some color there on what gives you that absolute confidence to be very helpful. And then secondly, could you update us on the integration of Sprengnetter, where you're seeing particular sources of upside, how you're fitting it into the product suite and to what extent that's been a driver of your price increases this year?

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Thanks, Will. I start and then I hand over to Tobi with regards to Sprengnetter integration. So the first quarter is absolutely in line with what we planned. So for us, it doesn't come as a surprise, also on organic growth. What we see for the remainder of the year, especially in the second quarter and the second half, following the year, we see strong growth continuing in the professional membership products, and we see accelerating growth in our private membership products. So we expect the core business to continue to perform at high levels at a basis, and on top of that, we believe that, of course, comps get a bit easier when we go through the remainder of the year. On the transaction-linked revenue lines, plus we expect the market to uptick slightly. So what you're going to see in Q2 and Q3, Q4 going forward is an increased level of organic revenue growth.

And with that, I hand over to Tobi.

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

Will, thank you. With regards to the integration, you really see that for the first 10 years, we have launched our membership additions also including some features of the Sprengnetter suite. So that's the first time that we actually bring it to market as an integrated membership package. We also pivoting around, and we've launched first services for the homeowner hub, where you can actually use some tools such as modernize tools for calculating the efficiency off your ESG-related metrics for your home, which is obviously in the future, a source for for the lease business as part of the interconnectivity. So the integration is progressing well. The teams have really jelled. There is more tech that we're jointly driving. There's more data that we are looking at jointly, and the idea is that we really make it interconnected in particular, between the homeowner hub and also the professional segment.

[Operator]

The next question is from Andrew Ross with Barclays.

[Andrew Ross, analyst]

My first one is to ask you about the new membership tiers that you outlaid the CMD back at the end of February. I appreciate we have only had a couple of months since then. But can you give us any sense as to how things are going, kind of curious on what agents are saying, how many agents have moved over, and if there's any [ company's ] call out in terms of kind of impact at this point amongst [indiscernible] help migrated, that's the first one. And then the second one is a bit more of a housekeeping one, but the stock-based comp stepped up a lot in Q1. It was EUR 9 million. Can you give us some color as to why, and how to think about that for the rest of the year?

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

Andrew, I'll take your first question. With regards to the feedback on the membership tiers, as you pointed out, we just recently launched it. The feedback is very positive. We marketed the membership packages as the strongest ever. It's undoubtedly the strongest package that this company has ever launched. And there is quite a bit of go-to-market and marketing efforts. There's a cross-media campaign on B2B segments. We had some really meaningful welders speak up for the power of the new additions. So a very positive feedback with regards to an exact migration path please understand we will not report out a detailed migration path, but we can share with you that we have crossed already a 4-digit number into the new product tiers as we speak. And generally, we do believe that this will be also the key driver for driving growth in 2025 and onwards. So as you know, we just launched it. So you will see materially also some of the growth coming through in 2025.

With that, maybe Dirk, you can take the share-based compensation question.

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Yes, Andrew, I will briefly elaborate on that. So total share-based comp in the first quarter stand-alone was EUR 9 million. There were 2 things driving that. One is obviously the share price development which was a good run in the quarter, and that explains 2/3 of the EUR 9 million, and the other one is -- the other 1/3 comes from performance with regards to the metrics that have been laid out in the long-term incentive plans for management and employees. But please don't expect them to kick in every quarter. I would stick to the guidance I think we gave to 1 or 2 quarters ago where I said, it should be in the range of EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million for the overall remainder of the year. So we obviously digested the biggest part of that in the first quarter already. And that should basically guide you through the remainder of the year. It will be around maximum EUR 50 million.

[Andrew Ross, analyst]

That's helpful. If I could just follow up on the first question, like all those over 1,000 agents who have moved into new membership, can you kind of tell us what you've observed in terms of any ARPU uplift on a net basis so far. Are you kind of seeing anything? Or are they coming on with discounts, so we don't see it until 2025? Just want to kind of think about the phasing of how this contributes as people move over.

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

What we can tell you is that we have a clear strategy of not providing these memberships at a discount because, again, it provides the best value that this company has ever bared and brought to market. But we will not -- we cannot talk about specifics with regards to what we see with these new calls about 1,000-or-so membership. So we're just pleased with the progress. There's a lot more to go through. There's a lot more to learn also. It's a huge communication effort. And then also, I think what's important, we've also launched our digital currency, which is somewhat embedded and also people need to get used to how that works. So there's a lot of puts and takes in terms of sales support and customer service that we're giving right now. So need a couple more months to really see a clear picture.

[Operator]

The next question is from Christopher Johnen with HSBC.

[Christopher Johnen, analyst]

First one, following up a little bit on the topic we just had. I'm just trying to understand -- so I get that you don't want to be more specific on the ARPU impact. I think that's fair. But I mean, we've had the term of service price increase in January, there should be a residual impact. I'm not sure when in January, this was really pushed through for the -- for most part of the customer base. But given what you said is it fair to assume that we should see an acceleration in the membership or just in the membership part of the revenue base in the current quarter? Or is there something offsetting that I may not be aware of that speaks counter to that. And I'm also curious, you gave a commentary around the accelerating revenue in the second quarter. Is that a reported comment, or would you -- is that also a fair as a statement on the organic revenue growth?

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Chris, can you repeat the second question again? I didn't get it.

[Christopher Johnen, analyst]

I think you said that you expect revenue in the second quarter to accelerate. Is that for the reported including the contribution from Sprengnetter, or is that also true organically?

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Okay. So I'll start with that question before I hand over to Tobi on the ARPU of the new memberships. That is -- and I was elaborating on that in my answer to Will's question earlier. That is, of course, organic as well as inorganic. So what we are seeing, I outlined it is mid-single-digit revenue growth on the core, meaning organic side improving over the course of the year. So we're seeing a 6%-plus revenue growth in core over the remainder of the quarters. And you can imagine that this is going to slightly accelerate over the second quarter and then continued in the third and fourth quarter.

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

With regards to your first question. So you should view this as really a core pillar for our long-term growth. So this is not just a onetime as we're rolling this out this year over the next 2 quarters or so. And the idea is also as we outlined during the CMD that there will be more and more specific services that we tie to those specific 3 new membership tiers, which means that only certain services can be consumed or booked as on top services by using our currency [ Immowelt ] going forward. And so the combination of rolling out and getting more penetration in these new core fundamental membership products plus the tie-in of additional services in combination with the currency, it will provide long-term growth. And that's our playbook. And again, this will carry on 2025 and 2026.

[Operator]

Next question is from Pete-Veikko Kujala with Morgan Stanley.

[Pete-Veikko Kujala, analyst]

It's Pete. First on private subscription growth, at least on a quarter-on-quarter basis, you added quite a lot of new subscriptions. I'm wondering if there is something that you want to flag there as driving this uptick or whether it's just business as usual. And then the second question is basically checking or kind of making sure I heard right. So there are no introduction discounts on the new packages on the professional side. The reason I'm asking is, I mean, obviously, it's quite common in the industry, but -- so there are no discounts that would be wearing off, for example, in 2025. I'm thinking about the ARPU impact like everyone else here.

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Pete, I'll start off with the ARPU impact. When we market our packages, which is the new mantra here is bronze, silver and gold, when we market that to our customer base, we market that with a clear intention not to decrease the ARPU of that specific customer. Basically, we're going to -- into a conversation with that customer and say, the value that we can bring to you will increase over time. And this is the way we bring those packages to the market, whether there is a discount to an individual packages that might be the case, but that's not driving an ARPU downside on that customer that's rather driving an ARPU upside. So our overall intention, as Tobi just outlined, is to improve ARPU with the implementation of those new packages. And if you have looked at our ARPU development on the core membership side, right, and on the revenue development on the core membership side, which is around 10%. And if you compare that also with the revenue increase that you are seeing on the private subscription side, I think it gives a good testament to our overall strategy, which is we want to grow within the subscription business, right, which is more than 2/3 of our overall in this company. And as we go along through our strategic journey here, we experience that this is going very well, right, on the private side as well as on the professional side, so gaming customer, increasing ARPU works well on both ends, and that is the strategy going forward. And to your -- to the last part of your question, has there been any specifics around the increase in private subscribers, I would think the market is our friends at that end. And the tenants continues to grow nicely in the high 20s. And as Tobi outlined in his speech, buyer plus continues to grow again. and gains momentum month-on-month. And I think those are the 2 ingredients, which lead us now to be sort of a bit happy with the strategy we laid out and the execution of that strategy because it's working well.

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

Pete, for the reason for the buyers plus is also -- there's a lot of supply in the market. But -- it's really helpful also if you have a little bit more of a redefined criteria set how you're searching because there's a plethora depending on which region you're in, where it's a new dimension of value that this product brings to the table. So that's also an angle that we have not experienced before, which is interesting.

[Operator]

Your next question is from Lisa Yang with Goldman Park.

[Lisa Yang, analyst]

Just wanted to double check on the revenue guidance. So you're saying mid-single-digit Q1 and 6% plus over the course of the year organically, assuming on a reported basis, you do, I don't know, 12% to 13% in Q2 that gives you to 12.5 in H1. If you assume 6%, 7% in so that brings you to more like no more than 10% obviously, that's within the midpoint of the range. But what would it take to get to the 11% you think, given the current market conditions, the upper end might be more difficult to achieve. So yes, what needs to happen to get more to the 10% to 11% as opposed to 9% to 10%. That's the first question. And secondly, just on the margin expectations for Q2. I understand you're going to see a bit of a normalization cases last year. Is it fair to assume Q2 cost more or less in line with Q1. So I think assuming I don't know, top line is up 13%, you'll get to around 61% margin.

[Dirk Schmelzer, executive]

Yes, I'll start with the first part that you were asking, Lisa, with regards to the growth guidance. What does it take to end up at 11%. I mean I I think I briefly outlined in the answer to the previous questions that we're quite happy with the development of our membership products on the professional as well as on the private side. So if you take that as a base, and then on top of that, we are adding transactional revenues, then you see that there is opportunities to come up with an 11% growth. But there's also risks in the business, which might bring us down to 9% growth. So that's exactly the reason why we are giving ranges, Lisa, and are not more specific here. But we believe that the base that unfolded in the first quarter really makes us optimistic for the remainder of the year. When it comes to margin guidance with regards to the second quarter, I would think that, yes, we will end up slightly ahead of what we've been seeing in the first quarter. But of course, as you know, we have tougher comps, so margin growth will not be as we have seen it in the first quarter, but the overall relative margin will be above what we've seen in the first quarter.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Next question is from Doyinsola Sanyaolu with Citi.

[Doyinsola Sanyaolu, analyst]

I wanted to ask a bit more about the private customers. In the release, I think the commentary mentions that customers are signing longer duration contracts. Is it possible for us to get an update on the average duration and maybe some context as to what's incentivizing it?

[Tobias Hartmann, executive]

One of the reasons why we think there's longer durations is just owed to the fact how the market is trending. As you know, there's still a tremendous shortage of units. And people are taking a longer time to find a suitable match. We don't have an exact breakdown in terms of duration that we can provide, but that's the underlying driver for that.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Filip Lindvall for any closing remarks.

[Filip Lindvall, executive]

Okay. So this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for attending interest and support in Scout24. Thank you. Bye-bye.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.