CAR Group Limited (CAR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you. Morning, everyone. Hope you're all staying safe and well. On the call today, we've got myself, obviously. We've got Ajay Bhatia, who's the Managing Director of our Australian business; Paul Barlow, who's the Managing Director of our International business; and Will Elliot, who's our Chief Financial Officer. So what we'd do, as we do traditionally, is we'll just talk to each slide, and as I go through each slide, I'll just call out the slide number that I'm talking to. So let's start with Slide 4. And yes, the -- I guess, the 2020 highlights, as you'll see from the financial performance, we've landed at the top of the range that we provided the market on the 17th of June, with adjusted revenue, NPAT and EBITDA up 1% and 6%. And I guess that, that really demonstrates the strength of our market-leading position, our resilience as a business through economic cycles and the strategy that we've continued to execute around building a diversified business model. There's a reconciliation at the back of the slide deck between reported and adjusted financial performance. But the key difference between the 2 is the $28 million in dealer support that we provided the industry within April, May and June. Really, really pleased to see expansion of our EBITDA margins up to 55%. We've declared a $0.25 dividend, which is the same as last year's dividend, but equates to a payout ratio of 82%. Really pleased to see our international businesses continuing to become a more meaningful part of the picture now, representing 24% of look-through revenue and continuing to demonstrate the potential that we know these businesses have and these markets have. And particularly really pleased with SK in South Korea growing EBITDA by 18% on pcp. Just looking at Slide 5. And these key operational metrics really speak to the scale and quality of the investments we've been making over many years now. And the performance here reflects the capability that we've been building as an organization over time. We've probably spoken to a number of investors around a few of these metrics over the past several months. But the ones I want to highlight in particular are probably inventory, and that's lower at the moment, down to 760,000 cars across all our network of sites. And that's largely being driven by strong demand that we've been seeing in used cars. These demand conditions really flowed through to what you can see in the next metric, which is time to sell here in Australia. And that's down 34% at the moment, which is levels that I can't recall seeing in my time at carsales. If you keep looking to the right, obviously, very pleased to see these metrics. They're more at the top of the funnel when it comes to car buying, but 31 million leads being delivered up 30% on pcp; and 1 billion sessions, up 7% on pcp on our network of sites is fantastic. Over to Slide 6. And I guess over the past 12 months, we've really worked hard as a business, building our audience and engagement, and that's really reflected in the growth that we've seen in our market leadership here in Australia. If you look at unique audience, I mean, that really demonstrates the size of our audience. And then the significant advantage that we have in time to sell really reflects the quality of the audience that we have as a business. And then the output of all that is the huge gap in sessions that you see developing over time that leads to more inquiries going to our dealers and helping customers buy and sell cars in a shorter period of time than really anyone else can. On to Slide 8, and let's just address the COVID-19 issues and emerging trends that we're seeing coming out of that. And it goes without saying that it's been a very challenging year so far for all of us as a community, whether that's been through bushfires or pandemics. In mid-March, we could see really the potential challenges that were coming through our data in terms of traffic and lead volumes. And from talking to international peers who are probably a little bit ahead of us in terms of the pandemic, we really felt that it was important for us as a business to establish some key priorities above all else and to communicate those priorities to our people and to use them as a guide for our decision making in what were obviously very uncertain times when you cast your minds back to mid-March. And the 3 principles were really -- or priorities were really around ensuring that we're protecting our people, supporting our industry and our customers and bolstering our business. When it comes to protecting our people, our primary focus as a company was ensuring people's health and minimizing infections were key. We also executed countless initiatives put in place to really keep our people informed, engaged and productive through the period. This has really helped us maintain a really good operating cadence since mid-March and one of the highest staff survey engagement scores I think I've ever seen in the business we received from the team as well, which is great. In terms of our customers, the thinking has always been, as market leaders, we have a real responsibility as a business to support our customers, and therefore, the industry as a whole. And we have to do it in a truly meaningful way and we want to do it in a truly meaningful way. And so we really looked at it from the perspective of addressing financial support, educational support and, where we could, emotional support through our EAP services. So the plans, we -- the support plans we put in place, we did that on the 23rd of March, and it included a 100% rebate on contracted services provided in April. And then when we got through April, in addition to that, we provided a further 50% rebate in May and then 100% rebate on new car services in June. And I guess all that translated to about $28 million in support through to June 30, and I know that's made a really meaningful contribution in protecting the jobs and livelihoods of our friends and partners in the industry that we serve. At the same time, though, we were also focused throughout -- on making sure we're innovating in what is a contactless environment. And so we did that through the release of things like badges, which we can talk about through Q&A, if you like; video listings. And we ran an online expo in our caravan and camping business as a bit of a trial. In terms of bolstering our business overall, the thinking was really to ensure that we made the right adjustments to protect short-term profitability while not losing sight of the things that are important to delivering on our long-term strategic objectives. So what we did, we did chase cost savings wherever we could, and executives took short-term pay cuts. We did reduce discretionary spend to support profitability. We stood down about 250 staff temporarily, most of which were partial. And that was really to align with the reduced levels of customer activity that were going on in the market. And JobKeeper was helpful in the decision-making in that area for us as well. We also felt it was important to strengthen the balance sheet further. And we did that by focusing on debt financing. Again, we'll talk to that later on. And ensuring that we delivered on some really good strong key cash flow -- free cash flow outcomes. If you look at Slide 9, and it's been interesting to observe the pandemic and some of the emerging trends that we've seen. And I guess, none of us have a crystal ball at the moment, but our sense is that some of these trends that we're seeing will continue for some time, while the acceleration certainly in the migration to online is permanent, and that's all what our research is suggesting. The other observation is a consumer preference back to car ownership as people are really avoiding public transport at the moment and are forced to take local driving holidays as opposed to flying holidays. The research we've been doing also suggests a pickup in first car buyers and people adding cars to their households, which makes intuitive sense where you can see our inventory where it's at the moment and what we're obviously hearing through the trade when it comes to trade-in volumes at the moment. We also believe that the stimulus packages that have been put in place by the government have been supportive in driving these changes that we've been observing. And through programs like instant asset write-off and super (sic) [ superannuation ] access schemes, I think they've been good programs for where we're at today. In terms of just group financial performance, looking at Slide 11, and it's clear you can see the evolution of our business strategy is really still paying off dividends for us as we continue to build shareholder value through sustained growth in revenue, EBITDA and NPAT over time. If you go to Slide 12, the international diversification of our businesses is driving really strong outcomes, particularly in South Korea. And it's now been 2 years of ownership or full ownership of Encar. Looking forward, there is a lot more to come from our international investments, and we expect to see this important part of our business continue to grow with -- as we've seen. And I'm really happy with where that's at, at the moment, with it now accounting for about 24% of our look-through revenue and 19% of our look-through EBITDA. On to Slide 13. And look, as usual, I won't drill down the revenue stuff. We'll keep that for later in the deck. Just talk to EBITDA quickly. But really pleased to see Online Advertising segment, solid growth, which was consistent with half 1 and achieved predominantly through dealer revenue growth as well as the rigorous focus that we've had on core cost management, particularly in the second half. Data, Research and Services growth was also consistent with half 1 and largely reflected the exit of some of our less profitable product and some services with some pretty decent outcomes there, particularly around RedBook. But we -- the team were also pretty focused on cost down there, too. Pleased with the continued strong growth that we've seen in international earnings, particularly on a look-through basis up 20% and underpinned by the performance that you can see in Asia, with Encar up 18% on pcp. And in Latin America, real cost focus over the past 6 months in particular, so pleased to see the losses reduced nicely there. On to Slide 14. And as we saw in half 1, we've continued to see good EBITDA margin expansion. And in fact, all parts of the business are now showing good margin expansion for probably the first time since, I reckon, maybe back to 2014. The 2%, if you just look at the domestic margins, is really a reflection of our ability to maintain good cost discipline while exercising some of the operating leverage that we've obviously got as a business in navigating the current market challenges that we see around Display and Private, which are both high-margin products. So good to see margin growth in the core. In our domestic investments, RedBook Inspect and tyresales overall margin impact was a positive 0.1%, which reflected again good cost management and a pivot to profitability in tyresales. In Asia, Korean margins improved by 20 basis points despite the ongoing investment that we have been making in branch operations and the improved utilization of those branches that we've been rolling out to. We've also got the benefit of the 10% price rise that we did with Guarantee product in August flowing through here and helping us deliver higher margins. Display was also quite good, particularly in the first half of the year, from memory. As mentioned earlier, the loss reductions in Latin America, particularly over the last 6 months, have been a positive impact as well on overall margins. And maybe on to Slide 15 now and looking at adjusted NPAT and the movement below EBITDA. So D&A increased by about 21% on pcp, and that was really consistent with what we saw in the first half and reflects the ongoing investment that we're making in globalizing the company, supporting the growth-generating initiatives that we're working on and ensuring that we're providing world-class facilities for our staff here in Melbourne, when they can, one day, get to use them. Net finance costs, again, quite consistent with half 1, down 8%. And that really reflects the reduction in average interest rates and the deleveraging of the business over the past 12 months. The profit from associates up 27% reflects the -- primarily reflects the continuing contribution that we're seeing from Webmotors. And finally, the Board, as I mentioned, has declared a 25% -- $0.25 dividend per share. On to Slide 16. And as all on the call know, we are a highly cash-generative business and it's great to see cash conversion continue to improve to 107% of EBITDA. Our leverage has also improved consistently, so half 1 -- from half 1. In actual fact, it's improved consistently since 2018, where it was about 2.2x when we acquired Encar. So now to see it at 1.6x, I think, is good and puts the balance sheet in a strong position. The 12% increase in CapEx, excluding head office, reflects the investment in the technology platforms that we have in supporting our international market expansion and domestic product development. So on to Slide 18 and let's just talk about the Australian operations. So look, it's been an incredibly busy year for us as a team delivering against our strategic focus areas. And you can see where those -- what those strategic focus areas were on the right-hand side. So things like Instant Offer expansion, finance integration, video product penetration and our membership program, for instance, are good examples of areas where we feel we've done a great job and delivered on our own expectations there. I guess there's still a few things that we're working on, which are in amber there. And so if you look at the exploration of dynamic pricing options, which is still currently being worked on, but what we did is we pushed it back a little bit to facilitate some other initiatives that we're working on. The expansion of our -- in breadth and scale of our inspection and tyresales businesses, I'd say, a lot of the operational -- a lot of the expansion there has been around operational execution. And COVID-19 has probably made that a little bit challenging, particularly for the inspection side of the business over the last 6 months. But with tyresales, we have achieved some additional breadth with new partnerships there, which is good. And we have got a push to try and improve profitability, which is showing some good signs, which is good. The increase in new car listings with the OEMs and the launch of new car showroom, probably a partial pass, I'd say, as we have -- we did see an increase in new car sales listings with the EPIC Sale campaign that we ran back in November last year. But over the last several months, new car inventory has become a real challenge for car companies at the moment. And so yes -- and we're seeing that same inventory challenge, obviously, in used cars, too. So looking for some more inventory to come through probably around October, I expect, will be a good time to see more inventory -- new car inventory flowing through. On Slide 19 and looking at dealer revenue growth of 10% was really good performance in what's currently a very strong used car market for our customers and which has helped drive the 13% half 2 adjusted revenue growth that we saw. The difference between the adjusted revenue and the reported revenue reflects the rebates that we gave our customers that had contracted services in this space in April, May and June. So just thinking about where the growth came from for the full year, so the 10% growth that we saw for the full year came from the -- obviously, the good growth that we had in unique audience, which flowed through to used car lead volumes. And that represented around 4% of the 10% growth that we saw. In half 2, that's probably 5% of the 13%. If you think about the price changes that we did earlier this year, that probably represents around 4% of the 10% in the full year and about 5% of the H2 performance growth, the 13% that we saw there. And looking at depth, the growth there, particularly around products like main events and automation, represented 2% of the 10% that we saw for the full year and 3% of the 13% that we saw in half 1. And that really reflects the strong ROI that we're achieving for our customers on those products. Slide 20, which is private, and revenue there was obviously challenging in half 2, and that's really reflected in the negative 5% pcp growth for the year. But I guess, what we observed there in half 2 with social distancing and private sellers was a real reluctance to sell their cars during lockdown conditions, particularly in March and April. And that was due to the restrictions that we had and probably also, I suspect, more people holding onto cars at the moment than what they would -- might have already ordinarily traded. The other issues that flowed through, obviously, would -- were around RedBook Inspect. We couldn't get inspectors out during lockdown conditions or restricted conditions. Tyresales volumes were also down a bit, but that was because we decided not to do any discounting in order to try and lift profitability. But really pleased to see, as you can see on the right-hand side there, just how Instant Offer continues to go. And we've seen some really good improvement in consumer NPS scores there, as you can see. And also the conversion rates on the right-hand side are really a reflection of dealers -- the desire of dealers to acquire additional inventory in what is a tight market at the moment. On to Slide 21 and looking at media performance, where the market for display overall continues to remain challenging as a result of mainly weaker new car sales conditions and the reduction in OEM ad budgets. We did, however, manage to outperform the broader ad market, which was good. In what is, though, a tough automotive market, we have also been trying to diversify our customer base further. And our assumed sites, which as many of you know, is our carsales inventory -- industry and leisure sites, the boatsales of the world, bikesales of the world, caravanandcampingsales of the world, those sites did perform much better than automotive in terms of pcp performance. We've also had good native video and native product adoption with strong audience metrics that we're seeing. We're hoping that we'll see some good turnaround improvement here once market conditions start to reverse for new cars. On to Slide 22 and just looking at Data, Research and Services revenue. And the difference between adjusted and reported revenue here is again just the rebates provided to dealer customers for services such as live market and other services that we have on contract with them. And as you can see here, revenue was flat and pretty similar outcomes to what we saw in half 1, largely reflecting the roll-off of those unprofitable products. So the underlying growth was again around that 5% mark. We did also continue to see good demand for some of our proprietary and research products. So we saw good growth in vehicle appraisal products, as dealers were really looking to grow their used car inventory. And RedBook continued to grow too at a solid and consistent rate, which was pleasing. Talking about international and on to Slide 24, and it's been a really productive year across all of our international operations with some great wins in our focus areas such as getting the August Guarantee price rise away with the Korean guys, along with the expansion of a Guarantee product up there. They also ended up opening up one more branch than they targeted themselves with and opened 9 instead of 8, which was pleasing. Brazil has also seen some great growth in their finance product, while the LatAm businesses saw a lot of new product being delivered throughout the year as well. There's only probably one area that we didn't quite hit the mark on, which we're working on at the moment, which is around Mexican customer acquisition. And what we've seen there is, again, we've released a lot of new products to that market over the last 12 months. We've seen good growth in customer yield, but customer numbers have been a challenge through churn at the moment, particularly over the last 4 months, and that's largely the result of the COVID-19 conditions that we're seeing. So there's a little bit of work to do there. But on to Slide 25 and looking at South Korea, and we're really pleased with the performance of Encar over the past 6 months. With the growth rates -- actually, the growth rates accelerated in the second half, and they delivered 16% growth in revenue and 18% growth in EBITDA for the full year on a constant currency basis. The environment in Korea, the macro environment in Korea has been a little bit challenging at times over the past 12 months. The new car market has been a little bit challenging, dealing with COVID-19, rebranding the business in half 2 as well. I guess, all those things have made the performance, particularly in the second half, even more impressive. The used car market in Korea has been particularly strong over the last several months, and that's a reflection, you can see that in the operating metrics performance grow through half 2 on the slide there. The growth in the popularity of our premium products like Guarantee inspection, combined with the opening of those 9 branches I mentioned earlier over the last 12 months, is really continuing to play an important role in the organic growth that we're seeing, as did the price rise in August that we talked about. But some of the other premium products like Dealer Direct, and, to a lesser extent, the home delivery services were also good. And we also saw some good growth in standard listings, too. On to Slide 26. So just talking about Webmotors. And look, I'd say it's probably fair to say that the business performance, aside from the distraction that we had with COVID-19 in Q4, was very good. And the 17% and 10% reflected in constant currency revenue and earnings, yes, probably understates the work the team has done over the past 12 months. I think we're in really good shape as we start to emerge from these pandemic conditions. But the performance low point was probably pretty similar to what we saw here in Australia, which was March and April. And the business has been recovering well since, with July by many metrics almost back now to pre-COVID levels. We've also seen the Santander Finance integration that we've been working on continue to really make a meaningful contribution to the business performance. And that was certainly one of the big growth drivers in the second half. We've spoken a couple of times about the business pushing into regional markets in half 2, and we are looking to lift our advertising spend there to drive market penetration. But we did hope that temporarily while the country just gets on top of COVID-19. Also similar to Australia, we did see strong growth in other key operating metrics such as traffic and lead volumes, as you can see on the slide. Talking about Slide 27 now and Latin America. You can see from this slide that our other businesses in LatAm, they're pretty small by comparison to Korea and Brazil, but we still believe there's good upside from each of these businesses in time. But we'll continue to pace our investment carefully. They're really not burning a hole in our pocket at the moment and give us great optionality for growth going into the future. The summary of performance across these businesses is that we made good progress with product development and deployment over the last 12 months. And we have focused on reducing costs, as you can see there. So we think we're in a good position as the market starts to turn the right way again. On to Slide 29, and let's just talk about our strategy update. So just looking at the strategy update, and we presented this a couple of times in the past. But the business' strategy continues to be around being focused on our digital marketplaces, our value-added services and exploring opportunities to position the company well into the future as market trends and consumer preferences evolve over time. So I don't think I really need to spend much time on that. If you go to Slide 30, and we did this last year as well, which is provide you with some insight on some of the areas that we're going to be focused on over the coming 12 months across our domestic markets. And one of those objectives, we actually achieved yesterday, which is good. So we got dealer ratings out the door, which is great. So I won't talk about that, but I'll just touch on a few other things. So Slide 31 and dealer finance integration. And we are continuing to build that opportunity in this space. And as you can see there from the numbers of financial service providers we've now been trialing with, it's certainly grown. And the numbers of cars on the site are actually, I think, closer to about 9,000 now and not the 2,500 that you can see on the slide. So we're seeing a good pickup there, which is great. Slide 32. And just private seller, some of the focus areas there that we're going to be working on, which is one of them is to improve our buyer insights using products like CarFacts to give buyers more information on valuation and demand. On to Slide 33. And just data and research, one of the focus areas, there we're working on, which is around more personalized engagement opportunities with the 6 million members that we've now got around Australia. And we see good long-term strategic imperative there and some important monetization opportunities that we can look to take. On to Slide 34 and looking at international. Next year is going to be another busy year, and we've got a lot to focus on. So just a few quick examples just in Korea and Brazil on Slide 35, you can see we're talking there, on the left-hand side, about Dealer Direct and the great opportunity that we have in South Korea to keep growing that. And as you've seen there at the chart at the bottom, there has been significant pickup in volume there, particularly in the last quarter, and we've more than doubled what we're seeing the same time last year. So good opportunity there in that C2B market. On the right-hand side there, home delivery is also another great opportunity for us to expand our services across dealers as we scale our own capability with this product over time. On to Slide 36 and just looking at Brazil. In Brazil there, we have developed some great technology around video conferencing features and home delivery services and we've been trialing those. So looking forward to monetizing them from pretty, well, now, which is good. And of course, we are going back to push hard on the international expansion that we've been talking about for a while. And like I mentioned before, when we were doing that, we were seeing good penetration of customers, which is pleasing and something to look forward to. Over on to Slide 38, so just some of the trading observations. And look, I guess the thing to say is the world is clearly in an uncertain place or so at the moment, so to say the least. And I guess, some of the focus areas that we are going to continue to work on, amongst other things, will be around our cost management. We will be investing in product and market positions, as we've been discussing. We expect to continue to benefit from the resilience of the used car market at the moment. And the trends that we're observing there should support that. We're well funded as a business. We have low gearing. We have strong liquidity and cash flows. And I hope -- yes, I expect that they will continue to support the growth and the dividends as well going into next year. On to Slide 39 and looking at some of the specific trading observations. I'm not going to go through them. We gave you a trading update in June. So I guess the only difference between the trading update in June and now is obviously the Melbourne Stage 4 lockdown conditions in metro. And I'd probably also add, if you look at Brazil, I think Brazil has -- is probably in better shape now than what we talked to in the middle of June, which is pleasing. But everything else stays as we guided in the middle of June. So sorry, I've run 6 minutes over time, but maybe if we can go to questions and back to the moderator.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question today comes from Kane Hannan from Goldman Sachs.

Just 3 from me, please. Just firstly in terms of the FY '21 outlook, we appreciate difficult to forecast in this environment. But just keen to think -- to hear about how you're thinking about the EBITDA outlook from here and whether we should be talking about growth of that 232 million adjusted EBITDA base. Secondly, just in terms of the lead trends that you're seeing in Australia, obviously appreciate the strong growth coming through. But just interested how you think about that, how that will trend across the rest of FY '21? And how much of that is just a pull forward of demand from the second half of the year? And then finally, just the margin outlook in Korea. Just wondering whether there are any one-off benefits or things that we should be aware of in the second half that drove that really strong outcome? I mean it doesn't look like there's been -- there hasn't been a slowdown in the branch network rollout. And then how we should be thinking about the margin impact of Dealer Direct and home delivery and some of those newer businesses as they scale up?

Okay. So I don't know, Will, are you happy to take the question on EBITDA?

No worries. Look, I mean, we obviously haven't provided any specific earnings guidance into next year. I think all I would say is that we've started the year well in terms of positive growth on pcp. But what that looks like the rest of the year, I think it's too early to tell. And as you can see, there's so much volatility in the market. We -- based on current run rates, we'd like to think that there's going to be growth on the adjusted basis, but we haven't obviously provided any specific guidance.

Yes. Thanks, mate. So just a question on lead trends. Ajay, are you happy to answer that one?

Yes. Thanks, Cam. On leads, in general, the trend has been very positive. So we are seeing, other than metro Melbourne, leads continue to be very solid and growing healthily. I can't see that changing any time quickly. So yes, I'm positive on leads.

PB, do you want to answer the question on margin outlook for Korea?

Yes, no problem. So we expect the margin in Korea to be similar to what we've seen over the past 12 months. We are getting the benefits of that branch rollout in Guarantee. We see around 2/3 of the revenue in the Guarantee coming from new branches and about 1/3 from efficiencies and utilization of the existing branches. So we expect that to continue through this financial year. Dealer Direct is a high-margin business line. It's C2B. So we don't expect that to have a massive effect on margin. If anything, it will be positive. Home delivery might offset that a little bit as we start to ramp that up. We've had that in a pilot phase, and we want to start moving that to -- and promoting that to other regions.

Our next question comes from Entcho Raykovski from Crédit Suisse.

I've got 3 as well. So the first one, the inventory decline, obviously you've addressed at the start. But just looking at the domestic side, you're now sitting at around 145,000 cars. Do you see that as being driven only by faster time to sell? Or is there perhaps some issues with dealers not being able to obtain stock as well? And just more broadly, if you're looking at that low inventory number, are there any concerns around the attractiveness of the site? Anything you can do to lift the numbers up? Or do you not feel that, that's needed? Sorry, long question, but if you could probably answer it more quickly than I've asked. Secondly, what are you seeing in used car pricing and dealer profitability at the moment? And does that impact your ability to put through price increases next year? And then just finally, can you provide any estimates of the support package impact for FY '21 if things open up mid-September in Melbourne?

Thanks, Entcho. So I guess with the inventory, so as you say, 145,000 cars, the lowest, I reckon, I've seen it. I'd say to you, it's a combination of both those things that you talked about. So time to sell, obviously, the velocity of stock through the site is much faster than it's been that I can recall. And I think the other issue at the moment is people are holding on to cars. And so if you were to pick up the phone and talk to a dealer at the moment, one of the biggest problems they've got is trade-in. So people aren't trading in cars, because they're holding on to cars. And if you think about Australia, we've got -- in terms of car ownership, about 93% of households own a car and about 50%-plus own more than 2. I suspect that 50% is going up possibly. But I'd say it's both. In terms of what we can do to optimize the site, I mean, the site is well optimized. If you look at traffic, you look at time on site, lead volumes, all those key metrics are all very strong. And I guess, at the end of the day, I'd much rather have less stock with lots of people trying to buy cars than lots of stock and people not. So I think we're on the right side of the trend at the moment. In terms of your next question, Ajay, do you want to deal with that one?

Yes. Thanks, Cam. Just the one line I would add on inventory is, if you look at the volume of stock that's moving every month, that's not been impacted, Entcho. So that's still looking pretty good. So value to consumers is, I'd say, exactly where it was last year. So not too concerned about that aspect. And then your second question was around dealer profitability. So around -- we always watch dealer profitability very closely, right? It's demonstrated by the $28 million package that probably many would say the second biggest package the dealer industry got after the government's JobKeeper to the industry. So we are very conscious of that. But at the same time, when you look at -- when you talk to many dealers, a common story is some will say 70% of business comes from carsales, 30% of bills is carsales. Some will say it's 60-40, some will say it's 80-20. But we are incredibly good value for money. And we will always look at value for money when we look at anything. Price rise decisions haven't been taken yet. We're in a pandemic time. But at the same time, we'll always look at value alignment, and we'll look after our shareholders as well as our dealers.

Will, do you want to address the third question, mate?

Yes. Yes. So just on the support package, Entcho, the [ total ] if it runs for 6 weeks. I think it's obviously very much dictated by the level of activity. And as you know, lead volumes are the primary source of our revenue from dealers. And yes, it's very hard for us to predict what that number would look like. The -- I think it's fair to say the underlying demand, despite being in Stage 4 lockdown, is reasonably good in Victoria, which I think is reflective of all of those trends that Cam talked about earlier. In terms of a steer around what does Victoria make up of our total proportion of dealer revenue, it's probably around 30%. So it will obviously be a slightly constrained month from an activity perspective, given we're in Stage 4 lockdown. But hopefully, that gives you a bit of a steer around the quantum. But I wouldn't want to give a number, given where I'm in the early stages of the lockdown.

Our next question comes from Fraser Mcleish from MST Marquee.

Great. And well done, guys in getting through what was obviously a really tough period to run the business. Just a couple from me. Just firstly on the kind of JobKeeper, could you just tell us what benefit or the impact of that was in the period and just confirm what you're still getting at into 1Q '21? Then the other one is just on the way you've calculated the adjusted revenue and just taken actual lead volumes and kind of multiply that by the price, and then that's how you get to what the sort of the support package impact was. So the actual volumes were up 5% in the second half. And then just finally on South Korea, was there any kind of stimulus measures helping there? Or is there anything like that in South Korea?

Will, do you want to talk about JobKeeper and adjusted revenue?

Yes. So yes, on the JobKeeper, the -- so the package was worth a little over $5 million in the last quarter. And the -- I suppose the way the package is designed is that once you're in, then you stay in for the first quarter of this financial year as well. So we will receive it in the first quarter this year.

Do you want to do adjusted revenue too, mate?

Yes. No worries. So yes, so Fraser, just on the adjusted revenue, so when we went out with the package, dealers had already committed to the services for those periods. So we went out in late March to say that April's fees would be at a 100% discount. And so what the rebate really reflects is actually what we billed customers. So we sent them a bill for exactly the services that they committed to, which included all of the lead volumes that they received during that period. And so it's obviously a very exact number. And so that's why I suppose we've taken the approach of showing what that looks like to best reflect the underlying activity, because in reality, that's what we billed customers and would have received from them if we hadn't provided the rebate.

And just on South Korea, there was no stimulus measures that I'm aware of.

Are they kind of seeing the same trends this year in terms of people -- due to social distancing, people buying -- not taking public transport, that kind of thing?

Yes. Similar but not exactly the same. I'd say to you, the public transport trends that we're seeing here are a little bit different. They're not quite seeing the same deep trends that we are in avoidance of public transport. And I just think that's probably more to do with just the way they've operated through this whole pandemic and levels of infection rates and so on. They haven't really had a massive spike, except probably at the start of the pandemic with the outbreak in that church. So I'd say it's been pretty consistent. And so yes, the team would say that the public transport is down, but it's not down by as much as what we're seeing here.

Our next question comes from Paul Mason from E&P.

Just 2 from me. So the first one, I was just wondering if you could talk a bit about sort of your thoughts around future price rises in Korea. I think you guys put through your first, probably, one for a while this year on Guarantee. And then the second, maybe if you could just articulate sort of any event that there's additional shutdowns elsewhere in Australia or a third shutdown in Melbourne [ comes with it ] that sort of your -- are you basically planning, yes, if there's level 4 shutdowns, to provide support as level 3? You sort of keep operating as usual? What's the sort of framework for providing support is?

Yes. So I'll do the second question first, and I'll get PB to answer the first question. But I guess we take the decision based on the environmental conditions at the time. So yes, there's no -- if it's a phase 4, we do this. It really comes down to what the government is saying, whether our customers are able to trade through those restrictions. And so it really -- the decision is really made on a case-by-case basis based on the advice from the government. So I'd say there's no structural framework that we take forward. It's case-by-case. PB, do you want to talk about future price rises in Korea?

Yes, sure. I think it comes up each year around the price rises in Korea. I think we're always looking at the market, where we're at from a macro economy perspective, where we're at from a value perspective to dealers in terms of implementing price rises. That will be no different this year in Korea. We'll have those talks and do the work necessary with management in Korea. I wouldn't say we haven't got one locked in at the moment. If we do one, it will be just based on the value that we are giving the dealers, particularly around the Guarantee product, which has been so successful. But for us, we want to just continue to push that Guarantee product out, get the take-up of it upwards of 50%. We're still down at 24%. If you remember last year, we were at around 20%. So we see that as a way in which we can just keep on getting more value out of the dealers for the value that we're putting back to them. So...

Our next question comes from Roger Samuel from Jefferies.

A couple of questions from me. Firstly, just on your new dealer finance product, and I'm just wondering how much you could make in terms of revenue and earnings from that business. I mean can we expect something similar to what you used to earn before from Stratton Finance? Second question is on the South Korean business. So you sort of dropped the SK brand recently. And I'm just wondering what's the impact on the consumer perception of Encar? Because SK is a trusted brand obviously amongst the consumer. And lastly, just on the private segment of the business, can you just tell us what's the driver of that revenue decline and how much is purely due to listing volume and how much is yield?

Yes. PB, do you want to talk about the SK brand?

Yes. So the SK brand, you've probably seen, we've replaced the SK logo with trust, and that's something that we've really pushed. We did a lot of surveys and a lot of market research around the best way to handle the dropping of the SK brand. But what we've seen from an impact from a consumer has been minimal. We've seen increased traffic, increased leads and particularly around things like our Guarantee product really are based around that trust and safety perspective. So I think the -- having the Guarantee product, keeping on pushing that out has really offset any changes that dropping the SK from our brand has done. So no, we haven't seen any impact by removing that.

Yes. And it was quite a big exercise, you can imagine, with 31 branches changing everything over, was quite a big exercise for the team. Ajay, do you want to talk to new dealer finance price?

Around dealer finance, while it's -- while you could compare it to Stratton, it's an entirely new opportunity. So what I tend to do is compare Stratton to more from an EBITDA perspective, what we're getting from consumer finance and then look at dealer finance as a new market altogether. But in terms of size of -- and quantum, at its peak, what Stratton was making in EBITDA dollars, dealer finance should be comparable in a multiyear scenario to get to that or even surpass that. That sort of answers the first question.

So just as quickly, Roger, in terms of private, I think you'll find the second half performance, what we're seeing is volume is a challenge in a COVID-based market. Yield on a per ad basis is up, so we're seeing good growth in yield. In terms of where the more material part of private performance, it was in probably more in tyresales in overall numbers, just because tyresales is high volume, low profit. But because we stopped discounting in order to try and drive more profitability, that was probably a larger impact. And not getting -- not having the ability to get RedBook inspectors out into market in the second half was probably more the challenge there, too. So I'd say it was probably pretty consistent across the board, but tyresales would have been the more material impact in terms of number.

And the one thing I'd add to that is what tends to happen during lockdowns is private revenue in a lockdown scenario definitely goes down by quite a sharp amount. But dealer revenue does go down as well, but it tends to come back. Private revenue sometimes is a bit more challenging around coming back in these conditions where supply is a bit more constrained. So -- but yield is up, volume is down.

Our next question comes from Eric Choi from UBS.

Well done on the result as well. First one, just wanted to clarify your comment where you said we're hoping for EBITDA growth next year. Just -- do we mean we're saying FY '21 adjusted EBITDA, excluding the Melbourne dealer support measures, could be up on FY '20 adjusted? Or do we mean FY '21 reported EBITDA even including that dealer relief could be above $232 million? And then second question, I apologize if it's a bit early to be asking about the price increases for next year. I guess the question is, would you consider a normal price increase in January for most regions but exclude or defer Melbourne? And then just drilling into, I guess, the actual revenue model of the dealer finance product, I think we said before we're thinking of monetizing via FSPs rather than [ order/trade ] subscription model. So just wondering, Ajay, if you could flesh out what that revenue model looks like a little bit more.

Yes. Ajay, do you want to do -- you can probably do the second 2 questions that you had around price rise and dealer finance.

I'll do maybe dealer finance. So on dealer finance, the model remains the same around FSP. But since we last spoke about it, it continues to evolve a little bit. And the FSPs have a very challenging legal environment at the moment. So how we deal with this sort of requires a little bit of business model innovation as well. So effectively, FSPs will be paying for it, but maybe the dealers will pay the FSPs for it. It's kind of halfway through where we blend it. It's sort of neither what we spoke about or neither what [ order/trade ] would do. But we've started commercialization already. There's 9,500 cars on the site right now, so really good signs. And the business model is starting to take shape. And on the second one, which is the dealer price rise, it's a really difficult one, Eric, and we need to see more through to January to sort of make a decision on that. And if the market is there to do it, that's where we'll go. But if the market is not there, then we'll assess the situation closer to time.

Will, are you happy to answer the EBITDA growth question?

Yes. So look, I think from an adjusted EBITDA perspective, there is the opportunity for us to grow if you treat the rebates consistently. And so obviously, if we excluded the rebates, we think there's the opportunity to grow next year on an adjusted EBITDA basis based off our current run rate. The reason why we haven't provided the guidance is because there are just so many uncertainties at the moment. We're obviously in Stage 4. Even if you include the rebate that we're providing to dealers in Victoria, I think there's still the opportunity for us to grow based on current run rate. So we're in -- the business is in pretty good shape at the moment, but there's just so much uncertainty in the environment that we can't provide specific guidance.

[ Now ] 1 minute over time. We'll take one more quick call, that quick question?

Our next question comes from Craig Wong-Pan from CLSA.

Just 2 questions from me. One is on debt. I just saw that you increased debt revenues in the second half. Just wondered what drove that increase, given there was a 0% growth in the first half. And then on tyresales, could you just explain the outlook for FY '21 with volumes expected to come back?

Yes. Ajay, you want to do -- you can do both those questions?

Yes. So the first one around debt, so one of the things we've been talking to the market about over the last couple of years is debt automation. And what's really important is the profile of the debt revenue rather than just the increase. And last year -- sorry, last half, even though there was 0% increase, the profile was we were starting to get more automation in place, we were starting to get more subscription in place rather than one-off buyers. So the positive news there is our debt automation subscription revenue has increased by, I think, is it 94% or it's literally close to double from this time last year. So the -- it's not only a really good increase, but it's the profile of the revenue is really good as well. And so what we're finding now is our one-off purchases on debt is going down. And our subscriptions on debt automation, which was our strategy, is going up. So I'm really pleased that our strategy is working in that sense. And kudos to our dealer sales team who've done a really good job in implementing this strategy as well. And the other question was around tyresales. So tyresales will be a challenging market over the next 12 months when it comes to revenue. In terms of EBITDA, we expect good outcomes. But in terms of revenue, it will be challenging. And we want to be very responsible during a pandemic year running a retail e-commerce product, a marketplace business and do it responsibly. So we are going to be running it more for EBITDA. And the positive news there is we've signed up 3 really big suppliers, and they're giving us rebates better than before, and our trade costs are lower than before. So the economics of tyresales actually look more attractive than last year, but revenue won't look as attractive.

Excellent. Thanks, everyone, and look forward to catching up with people over the course of the next few days. Thanks for dialing in this morning.