Frontier Digital Ventures Limited (FDV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So firstly, welcome, everyone, to the call. Pleasure to have everyone tuning in. Again, this past calendar year has been a significant year for us. So some significant milestones achieved, and our results have borne that out. Most of you will have had an opportunity, I hope to at least -- to look at the results this morning. I'm going to run through the highlights, and then we can take some Q&A towards the end. Fundamentally, you all are familiar with our business model, I hope by now. We're running online marketplaces in emerging markets. The model is very well proven, as you know, for larger companies that are -- whether they're ASX listed or whether they're operating around the globe, simply helping consumers search and discover key consumer purchases. In our case, in emerging markets and some of the better examples that you'll see around the value that's been created are in some of the names on the slide there. It's very familiar to people on the call, but these businesses are in every single emerging market around the globe, and we've got a really good representation in the key regions in which we operate. Those of you familiar will know that we focus on really 3 key regions, which I'll walk through in a moment. And our model, and again, I'll stop on this ever since slightly in a few minutes, is to look at the search and discover process for consumers, then working increasingly closely with our sellers, whether that's car dealers, whether that's property brokers and/or property developers in helping connect with their audiences. And that fundamentally means helping them through to transactions. There's been some really exciting product development by way of bridging that gap from classifieds to transactions over the last 12 months to 18 months. It's something that has been very much in the narrative of this model, how do you move from search and discover through to creating a transaction. And we've seen in the last couple of years, a lot of new entrants come into the market seeking to tap that economic opportunity around transactions. Certainly, when there was a whole lot of COVID cash floating around, we saw many, many start-ups in many of our markets. It's been as an observation, very interesting watching the last 12 months, watching the last 18 months, where we've seen the value of market leaders become even more important. So a lot of our markets -- being a market leader, super critical, all of our brands and market leaders, but we certainly saw a real sharp uptick in start-ups coming into a lot of countries, a lot of markets we're in with COVID cash. Remarkably, over the last 12 months, we've seen all of those very marginal businesses that we're chasing revenues around what we do with a lot of capital fade away or contract. So a lot of start-up activity was evident through '21, '22. What we've seen in '23 is a lot of that start-up activity abated, as capital dried up. What that meant for market leaders was that you had a really envious sort of strong position in the markets. And I think that's been reflected in our results, particularly our second half, which was very strong, but we've certainly been able to make advantage of being a market leader and that's in an environment where new start-ups that had come into market have probably failed, and we've seen very, very little by way of recent start-ups. So the markets have certainly rationalized, the markets have normalized and the value of being a market leader in emerging markets is just more critical than ever. And we've really benefited from that over the last 6 months to 8 months, particularly in the second half of the year. So when people talk about what's really important in your portfolio and the makeup of your portfolio, it is very much about being a market leader, and I'm just sort of emphasizing that point. I always mention it, but emphasizing it even more because in the absence of any real start-up activity, we have seen competitive pressures ever [ weigh ] a bit. We have fewer people in the markets, certainly less capital around to fund the new start-ups. So the value of incumbency is strong as ever. And if you look at the brands that do this really well in most markets, they're leveraging incumbency, and that's what we're starting to be able to do in our markets, as conditions were tough through the first half of '23, but certainly improved in the back half of '23. And you'll see that in the data that we released this morning that the second half performance was a real significant achievement for the Group. So lots of opportunities still in these emerging markets. And we're really well positioned, as I said, to start to take consumers, not just theoretically through the transactions, but now generating significant revenues from taking them through to transactions. And as I mentioned, you'll see that in some of the product initiatives that have been released. Our footprint remains the same, so I won't stop on these 3 very distinct regions, LATAM, which is now very significant for us. It's a 100% owned. MENA or the MMG. It's going to say the MMG Group, it's just the MMG, MENA Marketplaces Group. We haven't rebranded Asia, with FDV Asia remains so, but default of rebranding the first 2 groups. That third group has got a unique identity anyways, FDV Asia and has about half a dozen businesses in it that we own and operate. In terms of our model, again, standard slide for those, who follow our journey. It is about a slight unique market opportunity in emerging markets. It is about taking the trust and the role of an [ intermediary ] in a more significantly productive way for our businesses. And that just means if you're in [indiscernible] and you're looking for a house or a car, you search and discover on car sales or REA and go off and deal with the seller. Our model is just to keep people engaged and take them through to the right-hand side of the screen there, which is very much about the transaction opportunity. And I'll emphasize again that when we talk about transactions, it's not just generating a transaction per se and taking a commission, which we do, and we like that. It is looking at the opportunities on those ancillary revenue touch points, which we're getting better and better at. I guess, before we go to the financials, just to remind people the world in which we operate, high mobile penetration, big population, big GDP. So all of those macro factors that play well for these kinds of businesses. It's really interesting as -- if I go back 12 months, there's probably heightened interest rates, bit more risk in the market, people were sort of getting nervous about emerging markets. What hasn't changed for us is the opportunity and that opportunity is the significant GDP. It's a highly penetrated mobile market. It's a big population. All of these macro factors haven't changed. It doesn't matter what's going on around you in the world. And these core macro data points, which we really like, continue to remain really strong, and that's why we continue to really love these markets, which we're in. And as I said, I think the second half was evidence of these markets now doing what we want them to do. In terms of financial results, which were released just sort of walk them through. We have our statutory view, our revenues, as you can see on the left side of the screen, top left was $68 million, $67.9 million, $68 million. And then, of course, we add on to that the share of our Associates revenues. So from an accounting perspective, our revenue was over $80 million, which we think in the current environment was a really strong result, particularly in the second half as things started to improve. The real call out achievement in the last 6 months and it reflects in these accounts for the full 12 months has been the profitability. We've achieved a profit, and you'll see when you go into the financial statements, some really impressive graphs around the trend toward profitability for us at $3.7 million over the full year. And you add on to that, our share of Associates, our profit was almost $5 million. We haven't done that before. So if you look at our full year results, this is a maiden full year material substantial profit. Also in the second half on an NPAT basis, we had a better part of $11 million plus turnaround versus the first half. So really significant achievement in the second half on an NPAT level, finally get that bottom line, where we want. And that's been underpinned by continued strong cash flows, 4 quarters of operating cash flow positive for the business and in each region, so those big financial markets. We've grown our revenue on a consolidated basis. We see the situation in our Associates is a little bit different, but that's stabilized and improving. We've grown our profit from being loss making to being profitability. Our second half was a real standout in terms of NPAT, massive turnaround there, and that's been underpinned by really strong cash flows or really strong cash flow performance in all of the 3 key regions. So if you want to talk about the big financial [ markets ], I think this slide says it all. We're really proud of it, and we're really bullish and ambitious about 2024. Just to give you our journey and we're trying to make this as simple as possible. For those of you, who you have followed our story, I've often spoken about the sort of economic share view of the world, which suited us when we had minority positions in a lot of the businesses we're trying to explain to investors how we would account for the -- for our share of the revenue. And as we've moved to 100% and more and more of our businesses and we consolidate virtually all the 2 of our businesses now trying to simplify the way in which we produce the evidence of our performance, and this graph just talks to the revenue journey. You can see on the far right is essentially [ $68 million plus ] our share of Associates. So up over $80 million in 2023. Go back to when we listed, which is 2016, our first full year is 2017. So we listed in August 2016. Our first full year was 2017. And you can see that we've gone from essentially $9 million on a consolidated basis, up to [ $68 million plus ] our share of Associates. When you look at the profitability, and there's some wonderful charts in our financial statements under the review of operations, encourage people to go into that document and just look at the EBITDA journey and the revenue journey. This is really just looking at a year-on-year view and giving a little bit of an insight, which is more detailed in other slides in this deck around the performance on a revenue basis, our 360 LATAM business, $52 million in revenue. If you go back to the previous slide, we had a bit over $9 million consolidated revenue. LATAM alone has done $52 million. So 5x the consolidated revenue from [ $217 million ] just in one of our groups. The MENA Marketplaces Group, really good story this year in terms of sustainability, whilst it was a fairly modest increase in revenue. We had a tough start to the year, and we came home really strong in the second half. So lots of good stuff happening in MENA. Asia sort of chucks along, that's what Asia does performs really consistently for us on a consolidated basis. And then, of course, we've got our Associates, which I'll give you a bit of an update, as we walk through this presentation. Effectively, the situation in Pakistan has stabilized. We saw their EBITDA improve in Q4. And we're cautiously optimistic about [ 2024 ] subject to election results, which have just been held a couple of weeks ago in Pakistan. For you to understand our expenses, which were essentially the same as last year, while we were able to generate revenue growth. We've been really diligent in using tightening economic cycle to really put a microscope on our costs. I think we discovered this playbook during COVID, and we're able to refer to elements of that in 2023 and reducing some of the costs in the Group, and this has been all about efficiency. And by way of example, when we've created the LATAM Group, we've been able to consolidate a lot of roles, a lot of admin costs, a lot of production costs, although they did increase, which is linked to events, but being able to really look at the optimization of our cost base. And I think the great thing about this model, once you get your cost base sort of settled, your growth and your revenue growth continues and you start to pull out margin, right? So if you look at our EBITDA, our NPAT in the second half, our cash flows, we're now starting to see margin growth. Now we're going to work harder and harder this year at growing our revenues. We're coming out of a tough period in the first half of '23 into a much better finish to the year through the back half of 2030 and really optimistic about '24. And we're doing this of a profitability, of a position of profitability of growing margin and obviously improved cash. And all of our regions are profitable. Should note that MMG or the MENA Marketplaces Group went from loss-making to profitability. FDV Asia went from loss-making to profitability. Even our Associates, which had some economic headwinds remained profitable throughout the period, and we've reduced our corporate costs here in Malaysia. So really good picture as far as we're concerned, a significant improvement, whether it's in dollars or percentage points on our EBITDA and underpinned by the continued strong growth in the regions, and of course, then keeping a lid on costs. So really pleasing period, but lots of work to do this year. And we see this year, we see 2024 as a really -- it's kind of the next phase in our journey as a company, and we're starting the year from a really position of strength, and I think some of these numbers obviously demonstrate that. But what I will say is in the markets in which we operate our achievements been outstanding, a lot of our competitors have failed, a lot of our competitors have contracted. A lot of our competitors want to merge with us because they're seeing that we have really well-run companies and to have grown our revenues, to have grown our profits to improve our cash flow in a period, where a lot of other companies weren't able to do that is a real credit to the teams we have on the ground and their real focus on doing value-creating things and making sure our costs remain under control. Our statutory accounts, again, just a bit of back story. When we started this company, we owned minorities of a lot of things, and we made every effort to have this sort of economic share view. We're now just moving much more toward the reportable statutory view because it reflects the fact we own 100% of most of our companies and really helping our investors understand our statutory accounts. Now this just looks at our statutory revenue, it helps you understand the EBITDA from our Associates added in, and there's a whole lot of stuff around FX movements and significant items. They will dissipate over time, such as our D&A charges, which are related to purchases over the last couple of years of some asset-based businesses. Most compelling number of this is just that second half NPAT performance, which has been a really significant improvement, not just from H1, but from previous years. And as I said, it really puts us in a position, where we start the year in a strong position with a lot of these pointers absolutely heading in the direction that we like. So whether it's our revenue growth, which -- revenue was the hardest thing to find in '23, you look at our competitors and look at what we're able to achieve, whether it was the EBITDA position, our cash flows or on an NPAT basis, you've now seen a really strong recovery in our business from sort of Q1 last year, which is pretty tough. And we've got our settings right. We've got good, strong, profitable regions, and we continue to build on that. But just to give you a bit of an insight into the regions, our LATAM business, standard slides. So hopefully, those who have followed these presentations before will be able to relate to it. Again, revenue growth, really healthy mix of revenue growth from different categories, different revenue lines. Recurring subscription, of course, [ is your ] bedrock. Advertising and media on this middle pie chart has been the also [ add on ] if you like, the addition in most of these sort of classified space models. Transactions, of course, is what we're being talking about. It continues to make a growing contribution. And then this other part, right, this is our ancillary services. This is bridging the gap between the search and discover process that consumers go through. And then at the other end of that scale, you've got transaction. This is the pieces in the middle that you so often hear about when you're analyzing these businesses. And in our markets, it's not necessarily selling home loans or trying to get people to do a property inspection, as it might be for REA or car sales and ours is about providing them with more products that help them through to the transaction and the decision set. We'll talk about a couple of those in a minute. Some significant improvements on EBITDA in each of the businesses, which we're very pleased with and setting ourselves to really make sure we continue those trends. MENA, while our revenue growth was a little bit modest here, it was a fairly tricky period to grow revenue. What we were able to do is significantly improve the sustainability and the profitability. And when we bought this business, Avito, a couple of years ago, they had lost AUD 3 million, now it's effectively made [ 1.5 billion ] and we're growing revenues again. So really good headline numbers coming out of this part of the world. We do see it as a part of the world, where there is a lot of opportunity. If you look at the mix of revenues, most of which is still fairly traditional. That's that subscription base. And media and advertising and not much yet on that transaction/ancillary product opportunity when consumers go from search and discover through to the transaction. So lots of hard work, heavy lifting done in this part of the world through the period, and we're pleased with the settings we now have heading into 2024. FDV Asia, it's a fairly smallest to the 3 groups. But again, I'll just highlight, we were able to grow revenue through what was pretty tricky circumstances. It's a part of the world, where transactions are much more significant part of the revenue mix by categories. You can see in the middle there, the pie chart. But of course, on the right side, we moved this business through to profitability as well. So if you look at our scorecard, LATAM was profitable, became more profitable, MMG was not profitable, became profitable, FDV Asia was not profitable, became profitable. So some really significant maturity of these businesses in terms of their ability to generate more revenues and do it at a lower cost. Just to give people an update, and this hasn't changed from our last update at the end of the quarterly, but we've now seen the Pakistan situation sort of stabilize throughout. They've remained profitable, and in fact, increase their profitability in Q4 versus Q3. So their second half on a profitability basis was pretty strong. Revenue stabilized. What we saw a couple of weeks ago was fresh elections in Pakistan. There is now a coalition government, and they're going through the process of making key appointments such as regional governors, et cetera. But in chatting to the team yesterday, just recently as yesterday in Pakistan, I think everyone is now sort of consensus view that the politics has to be put aside and the economics have to really be the #1 priority for the new government by a fair margin ahead of anything else, and we remain cautiously optimistic with a new government in place post those elections that we'll see better trading conditions in Pakistan this year. Interestingly, PakWheels, the automotive business actually grew pretty strongly and improved its profitability. We know that Zameen took a big hit, but we've seen the worst of that, and they have maintained their profitability throughout. So cautiously optimistic in this part of the world. Real upside for us in terms of an organization is continuing to deliver on our 3 consolidated regions in LATAM, in MENA, in Asia and the benefit of what will be an inevitable improvement in Pakistan. So lots of upside value to be seen in our business over the coming 12 months to 18 months. Just a bit of a quick product update. And again, it really just talks to this opportunity just to double-click on LATAM for a moment. Lots of transactions being done. Average sale price by -- if you're sitting in Sydney or Melbourne and reading that average sale price, you probably cry to your [ corn flakes ]. But this is sort of 2-bedroom apartments in metropolitan areas are fairly modestly priced in Aussie dollars or U.S. dollars. Commission rate we take and the value of that around primary and I talk about this commission rate being a product called Iris. So a lot of people are really interested in Iris. Iris is a product that we released across all of our markets in LATAM last year. This really simply connects property developers across Latin America, who have projects that can't move with the broker network that we have across Latin America. Those 2 groups don't talk to each other. Property developers don't talk to brokers. They don't typically use brokers. This is really a B2B product that's been released. It's in all of our markets. It talks to our property developer customers, who can't shift some of their inventory. They plug it into Iris. This allows access for the 10,000 or so brokers that we can plug into Iris. They go find the inventory. They typically have buyers. And then we take 0.6% of the commission, 0.6% of the sale price, which is about 1/3 of the commission, as a fee for joining these 2 parties. So you can imagine, you're a broker in Bogota or Santiago or [indiscernible], for example. You've got to buy, you can't find inventory. On the other side, you've got these property developers, you have these projects. They've got to shift them. That's how they make money. They've got to shift them quickly and at the best price. We're simply connecting those 2 groups and generating more transactions for both parties. Our fee is 0.6% of the value of the property, and we sort of sit back and collect that. So we're seeing steady improvement in the revenues coming out of this. And as we get it right, as we market it more and we get it more established in all of our markets, we're quite bullish about the potential for this product. Some data points you can sort of pick up in this deck after the call. And it really goes to this point I was mentioning earlier, which is search and discover very typical classified through the transactions. Iris plugs right in the middle and helps to demystify all of the things that go on between searching and finding a house and actually buying that house and it's a B2B product. So it's a little bit different and it doesn't involve consumers per se, but the potential for this is significant. It already contributed over $1 million in revenue last year with a very minor emphasis and much of that was in the second half. So a big opportunity around this product and products like this. So the point of me talking about this is it's an example of what can be done and not what hypothetically we've spoken about, but actually is in place is generating revenues and is crystallizing this story about moving consumers from a search and discover through to transactions and not just having to do the transactions on behalf of them, but actually earning fees, helping people get more transactions done and that's the kind of business we're in. In terms of our outlook, just 4 things I'll sort of touch on for one moment. Our emphasis and we're a growth company, revenue growth company. We think that there's a significant opportunity in these markets, just some of the data I had on earlier slides around population, GDP and volume of transactions. We know that there's a ton of value to be created. So we start 2024, as we've started every year with a big focus on revenue growth. We know that we start 2024 in a very different position than we've ever started any other year, where all of our businesses are profitable. So margin is in [indiscernible] now it's a -- we're talking about margin in our businesses, which is a really great thing to be focusing on. And this is a very different way when you're running these businesses for those on the call, who perhaps many of whom might have run classifieds businesses. But when you're in a position where you're fighting for market share, you're fighting for leadership, you're getting people signed up, you're rolling products out, you're engaging consumers, and you kind of got one eye on the growth pedal and one eye on the cost pedal because you're trying to reduce burn, you're trying to reduce losses. That all starts to come together, right? So your theory gets practiced and turns out it's right and then you become profitable. And then it's a very different environment you've got in a business, where you're starting to think, wow, we're growing revenue, we're profitable, we're generating cash. So those first 2 categories, revenue growth, margin. That's a very different world to what we've had before and it's a really exciting one. What becomes even more important, and it was certainly important before but what becomes perhaps even more critical to your future opportunities, your product road map. So you can get businesses to now with a fairly bog-standard [ U.S.], a fairly straightforward way of searching, discovering and trying to promote ads along the way. Now you've got this opportunity to really focus on your product road map and help build products that take consumers through the transactions, not just the transaction itself, but we just mentioned Iris and there's other ones that are in market that are similar. So that's a really important focus for us now. And product is always a focus for companies like ours that goes without saying. But you're now doing it in a world, where you're focused on revenue growth, you're profitable, you're generating cash, it becomes fun. Product development when you're trying to get there is hard work. It's hard work anyway, but product development becomes exciting because it's working. The proof of concept has gotten to be really achieving revenue growth, margin growth, cash growth. And now you've got this opportunity to build really good products. And we will invest in product development this year. It's a real priority for the Group, particularly in LATAM and some of the platforms we want to improve. And this all goes to the box at the right side. So we're all about creating value for our investors. And I think if you look at the fundamentals in our business, there's a heck a lot of value that we've created, and we're going to continue to create and that's a big focus for us. And that doesn't mean -- I think the word monetization is sort of being used in this category before. It's not just about that. It's about how do we create value. And if you do all of those things, and you tuck in transactions and you get it right, all of those things are in the best interest of shareholders. And that value creation will crystallize of its own accord, if you do all of those things, perhaps from left to right on this slide. So a pretty exciting year for us ahead. There's more data at the back of the deck. And of course, you've got the privilege of walking or reading through our review of operations, which was released this morning with our fully audited signed off accounts. It's been difficult during the COVID years getting audited accounts out on time. I think everyone took a bit of a break from that. But we're back on schedule, fully compliant, of course, to what we do. And we see that as a real credit to our team, which I'll thank publicly on this call to getting all of that work done. We've got lots of businesses in lots of parts of the world. We've got a really good audit. We've got all of our information out and now it's sort of full steam ahead for 2024. So I won't stop on the additional data, except to say it's all there, as you can see in the back of the deck, and I'll let people go through that in their own time. But on that note, Jerry, I'll stop sharing the screen if you like, and we can perhaps move to any questions that we might have from people on the call.

Thanks, Shaun That's right. Now we'll be moving on to the Q&A section. As a reminder, participants can submit questions through the Q&A function in Zoom. The first question we have received is how are you thinking about revenue growth versus earnings growth in 2024? Is the preference for higher revenue growth, while maintaining margins? Or are you happy to set lower margin -- lower growth with margins expanding?

So [ I'm saying ], which is your favorite child. We're a revenue growth business, but we're also a business that understands economics and understands the markets and having been running these businesses for a very long time. And Jerry, I have been in listed businesses since 2021. So I don't know any of -- absolutely we're revenue growth first. But what we all -- what we can do is sort of [ walk and she gone ]. We proved this year 2023 real emphasis on just keeping costs down and that's a great thing about the model. So we will look to grow revenue absolutely #1 priority. We will look to grow margin. At the same time, we want to make sure that we're investing on that product road map. So it's a little bit of both. But if you force rank them, I go revenue, I go margin. Now historically, if you'd ask me that question, we didn't have margin. Was it something [ you ] had to manage because we're losing money. I mean, you can argue, you're managing reduction in losses and that's margin. But we're now in a position, where we've got a good profitability profile. And to grow margin, I've always had a view, and it's a pretty simple one that if you grow revenue well enough, your margin will grow if you're sensible on costs. And I think that's just how we think about life, and it's a very simple way of thinking about it. And maybe it's been lost on some companies that haven't been able to get through the past 18 months. And we're taking a very simple view of that and here we are with pretty good results for '23.

Thanks, Shaun. The second question we have is that 2023 operating expenses seem to be flat across the Group in 2023. What are your expectations for operating expenses growth if higher revenue growth can be achieved?

Look, I think '23 for us was an exercise in examining that cost base. And the other thing that companies need to be aware of, and this was certainly our cases. As you get to a size on your revenue, it's one thing to say you've got $80 million in revenue, and [ we got like ] almost as many in costs, that's a lot of money. It's just a lot of money to run these businesses. So really in '23, it was about saying, "Hey, we can do this faster, we can do this cheaper, we can do this more efficiently. And that's just the maturity of the business, not in slowing down sense, but the maturity in the business and being able to say, hey, we're now at a point, where we're market leaders, we figured out the model, we've invested over the journey, now we can moderate that investment. And I think for us, we'll continue to really be vigilant on keeping our costs under control. You've got to get the balance right. And it goes back to this idea that we've worked our guts out to get to now. It's not easy running businesses dotted around the world, but it's a choice I've made, and I love it. But it's an effort to get that cost base under control. We made an enormous amount of effort in doing that, whether it was our finance team in [indiscernible] or all of the finance departments around each of our countries, cost control will be a big focus for us. But going back to what I sort of [ half ] mentioned the [indiscernible] is we want to continue to invest in our product platforms. That's how we're going to grow these businesses over the next 3 years to 5 years. Growing them over the last 3 years to 5 years, we're certainly about product and certainly about investing in product, but it was about getting the model right, it's about getting market penetration on your classified. It's about educating your sellers that we can help them with transactions. There's a hell of a lot of work went into just building the foundation. But you get to now and you say, right, now we can invest in the product road map on the back of all of the work that's been done, and that does cost money. That's obvious. But it's an exciting thing to be doing, and it's a productive thing to be doing. So we're not -- businesses in our line of work, who've struggled might have been saving the [ furniture ] for a long time, that was never been us. We're now about investing really in the product road map. And I think that's one area, where we're going to -- we've got to be really clear minded about the benefit of doing that. You do things like Iris, you can [ see ] they make a material contribution. So our absolute emphasis is on keeping costs under control. We're absolutely foot on the gas on growth, and we're going to do it by investing smart in our product road map and producing products like ours.

Thanks, Shaun. The next question we have is, how is the competitive landscape evolving in Latin America? Are you seeing any opportunities to consolidate in the markets you are in?

Well, it's a very interesting question. And I will say that just the economic gods have helped that achieve that outcome, where there are fewer competitors in our markets now than they were 2 years ago. That's been marginal models backed by COVID cash that we're trying to [ flip ] the ticket on high-value consumer transactions, houses and cars, but doing it in a way that we just scratched our head. And that was, hey, I'm going to buy your apartment, and I'm going to flip it in a market that's hot or what happens when that market is not hot and interest rates go up and there are fewer transactions, property prices drop. How the healthier buy a property and [ flip it ] at a profit. The answer is you don't. And those businesses have really fallen back. It's no different to people trying to buy your car and flip it in 30 days for more than you could otherwise do it. That doesn't work when car prices or when the interest rates are going up. So those models have -- and those businesses have shrunk. And guess what, a bit like the [indiscernible] briefing keep doing the simple things well and we're a market leader providing real value for our customers. So the competitive situation has abated any way. When we look around and we look and say, "Hey, are there M&A opportunities? This question always comes on. We say, "Well, there always are. I'd argue that a lot of them at the moment are, I'll call them A- or B+ or B-grade assets maybe at best. And these are -- did decent businesses that are in markets that have fared out that it's actually pretty hard to run these businesses long term and do it successfully like we're able to do. So there's a little bit of M&A around you could consolidate. I think what we're focused on is building value for our shareholders. We recognize that we're undervalued. We recognize that our results need to flow through to better value for our shareholders, and that's what we're working on. And I don't think doing M&A at the moment when our share price is probably a great idea. We'd love to continue to deliver results. And if that happens, then M&A opportunities will probably reappear. But if we do them, they're going to be the right ones. We've always -- we'll be really clear about the accretive nature of those, and it won't be increasing new markets, it'll be making sure we can continue to build on our story in the markets we're in, which is helping consumers from search and discover through the transactions. There's a few questions popping up in the Q&A section there, Jerry as well, just...

Yes. That's all right, Shaun. Just as a reminder to all the participants, feel free to submit your questions through the Q&A function. The next question...

There's 3 questions in that Q&A function, just so, you know, Jerry.

Yes. That's right. Our next question, we will go with is MMG is largely generating revenue from traditional classifieds products. What do you see as opportunities to grow revenue in the region? And is this a function of greater product offerings and changes to the pricing model?

Yes. It's a fascinating question because the MENA markets are relatively -- the market's wearing, Morocco, for example, it's quite a reasonably developed country. It's not [ some port ]. The classifieds model is really well established. Where it's fun is, it hasn't moved toward transactions like other regions yet, and it will, and it is. There's certainly been some start-up activity again off that crazy COVID cash over the last couple of years. But the real opportunity there is to start to move consumers toward transactions and do more, particularly in houses and cars. And that's where the revenue growth opportunities are. It's just got a really traditional sort of profile about it at the moment, but it looks like it probably looks like LATAM 5 years ago, probably looks like Asia I'd argue 6 years to 7 years ago. So it's very much the third money line when we look at our regions in terms of its evolution. But absolutely, it will be product driven around taking consumers beyond the basics and we started doing that. We've had some success with engaging with property developers and car manufacturers on helping them do transactions. But it's more been about, let us, show you it's possible because you don't think it is [ handset ] revenue profile, but let us show you, it can be done, and we've done that. So this year is about building on that and starting to get more products in the market that can help consumers go through the transaction. It's that ancillary opportunity. It's not straight to the transaction. It's more about how can we help you make that purchase decision with greater certainty and greater trust. And in emerging markets, we trade on trust and hence a certainty for consumers and sellers. That's how you generate more transactions and that's how you generate more value from those transactions. So it will very much be about that step. But we see it as a really interesting part of the world on an opportunity basis, it's got strong classifieds. We have proven the classifieds model by taking EBITDA from a $3 million loss to $1.5 million profit. So that's a big tick for the team. It's now revenue growth, and that's a clear mandate in MENA, and it's an opportunity we see pretty clearly. And look, it will benefit from our experience in other markets and other regions. And keep in mind that some of our Asia businesses are way down the transaction path further than LATAM. LATAM is doing transactions in fewer volume, but doing a slightly different -- a bit more focused on the ancillary piece. MENA will be similar outcomes, slightly different path. And we're just really getting clear on that as we head into 2024.

Great. Thanks, Shaun. Our next question is, what are the gross profit margin profiles of the individual businesses?

Think you'll find them in the back of the investor deck rather than me read it out. It's in the segment report, but they vary from single-digit early-stage profitability right through to, I think, the top of my head, Jerry, I think a couple of them are in the [ 20s ], one might be in the [ 30s ]. We'd love to get everyone in the [ 40s to 50s ]. That's where we think we can get to. And if you look at our sort of revenue trajectory and you just model out each business and you think about that trajectory, we keep growing revenue, we keep growing margin. And the -- that the question, I would get in the past is well, how profitable can these things be? And we're already seeing them clearly double digit, but heading into the [ 20s and 30s ]. So I'm on the record of saying, I think [ 40% ] is not about hurdle, [ 50% ] would be wonderful. So we're in that -- we're on track. I don't like to give sort of guidance on forward-looking EBITDA margins, but I think people can do the math. If they go back and historically look at the performance of the businesses, I'll see that everyone is growing, and no margin stagnated. So you only have to do some, well, year rate math and extrapolate that out and you'll see margins, but it is in the deck there. People can go back and look and do a quick sum. So yes, it's been an interesting watch for us over the next sort of 18 months.

Thanks, Shaun. The next question is, what are your expectations for the likely timing of when Dubizzle, which is Zameen's main parent company may list?

Yes. So Dubizzle Group, so they have adopted the trading name of their significant business in the UAE there, where Dubizzle is a horizontal classifieds like our Avito or Encuentra24 business. So in terms of their listing, I think when I've been asked this question before, number one is they still want to do it. November '22, they announced that they were pursuing a listing or -- sorry -- they announced that they were preparing to pursue a listing, so getting the work done. And by getting the work done, that means digitizing it, finance reporting, et cetera. There is a lot of sort of cleaning house that you've got to do before you list and it takes some time, particularly coming from a field like that. So that aspiration remains really clear on their part. The timing is the question. And it will more, it won't -- it's more likely to be a European listing than a U.S. listing just because of the nature of the assets. So you can sort of assume London, not New York. And it will hinge on how quickly Pakistan recovers. So that's all in our best interest. So if you want to look at our business and the doomsdayers will say, "Oh, Pakistan business got wobbly. Well, yes, I know. But I will say that the people running and have very high aspirations for what they want to do with that asset. So we're very aligned. We're very lucky to have the people running that business that we do because they've got big ambitions for a value event for their holding company, of which Zameen's the biggest asset. So we think it's in good hands. And evidence of that is their ability to continue to run it profitably and cash flow positively throughout what's been a tough 12 months. So -- so we're -- big slap on the back for those guys. They've got their business -- they've shepherded the businesses through a difficult period. They're very much keen on their IPO. It's going to need Pakistan to recover. We've seen it stabilize. So let's just see what happens in '24. But yes, we're there to help them achieve their goals. We've said that to them. We'll say, we'll help you in any way we can, as you have the shareholder in Zameen. So everyone's holding hands and skipping in the same direction on that front.

Great. Thanks, Shaun. The final question we have is how are you feeling about FDV's cash balance heading into 2024?

I feel good. I have got [ James Brown ]. We generated at an operating basis cash every quarter in 2023 first time we've ever done that. Our cash is just such i.e. goes without saying precious commodity in any business, in ours even more so because historically, our businesses have been loss-making and that means you burn cash. Our businesses are all profitable. So that means they generate cash. So it's a good feeling when that fourth quarter rolls in and you say, it's positive. And we're -- just to give people some insight when we report internally, we report to our Board and all of those things, first slide is always cash. And we're very, very acutely aware of our -- of making sure we manage cash beautifully. In the past, we've built our business on M&A and that's always required cash. And we've had to raise cash along the journey. Now that pleases some people, it displeases others, but I'd point to the fact that it's always about the long term. But you're talking to the largest shareholder of the company, and I can -- people can rest assured that no one wants to be diluted. We want to generate cash. We've done that in 2023, and we'll continue to be really hypervigilant on that because if you're generating cash, it gives you optionality. It gives you freedom. It gives you the ability to focus on things like growing revenue and building better products because you've got that key financial market under control and we talk about those key financial markets, whether it's your revenue growth, your EBITDA performance, your cash performance across your balance sheet, which is the sum of everything. But we're hypervigilant on that, and we know that's got to be under control. We know it's going to be growing, so we can go do more cool stuff in markets that are going to create value for shareholders.

Thanks, Shaun. That concludes the Q&A section for today. I will now hand back to Shaun for closing remarks.

Look, I'll just -- firstly, thank you, Jerry, for hosting the call. Thanks for everyone, and we've had 50-plus people dial in for hearing us. Been a really challenging year, a year of 2 halves, appreciate second half really strong, first half tough, puts us in a great position for this year. Through those tough conditions, we set about making sure that we've got all our companies to profitability, we've got them all to grow, and we've got them all to be cash flow positive. So I think investors can step in for the next part of our journey, which is really exciting. And as I said, it's a big focus on creating value for shareholders, and we'll do that by growing our revenue, our margin and building core products.

Thanks, Shaun. That concludes the full year 2023 results briefing. Thanks to all the participants for attending.

Thanks, everyone. Have a great day. See you. Thank you, Jerry. Thanks, Harry.