REA Group Limited (REA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
February 4, 2021
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Operator
operatorThank you for standing by, and welcome to the REA Group Limited Half Year Results 2021 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Graham Curtin. Please go ahead.
Graham Curtin
executiveGood morning, and welcome, everyone. My name is Graham Curtin, General Manager of Group Reporting, and I'd like to thank you for joining REA Group's 2021 half year results presentation. Today, you'll hear from REA's CEO, Owen Wilson; and CFO, Janelle Hopkins. Owen will talk to our overarching financial performance, the Australian property market and strategic highlights for the year-to-date. He will then hand over to Janelle to talk to our financial results in more depth. As always, we would then be happy to take your questions. I'll now hand over to Owen to kick us off.
Owen Wilson
executiveThanks, Graham. I'd also like to welcome everyone this morning. REA delivered a remarkable result given the market volatility and economic uncertainty we experienced in the first half of this year. This is particularly true given the Melbourne market came to a virtual standstill for 2 months during the COVID-19 lockdown. Our teams delivered so much this half as outlined on this slide, and we'll cover these achievements in more detail throughout the presentation. Turning to our results from core operations for the half. Revenue was $430.4 million, a decline of 2%; EBITDA after share of associates was $290.2 million, an increase of 9%; and NPAT was $172.1 million, an increase of 13%. These results include a significant reduction in core operating costs for the half, down 13%. The Board declared an interim dividend of $0.59 per share, fully franked, a 7% increase on the prior corresponding period. Pleasingly, REA also increased our strong core EBITDA margin to 67%. In Australia, the residential market had a very strong finish to the year. National residential listings increased 4% for the half, driven by the easing of COVID restrictions, combined with increasing consumer confidence, record low interest rates and healthy bank liquidity. The Commercial business had a significant decline in listings due to the economic impact of COVID and the continued moratorium on tenant evictions. Pleasingly, the Developer business saw an 8% year-on-year increase in project launches, assisted by state and federal government stimulus measures and record low interest rates. This environment has contributed to a resurgence in demand for new housing, with inquiry volumes on our site increasing 84% year-on-year. Janelle will provide more context in her update. REA's growth strategy remains consistent, and we've made excellent progress on the delivery of key initiatives during the half. In Australia, we've continued to deliver record audience numbers, and I'll cover this in more detail on the next slide. We've spoken previously about our strategy to create value for our customers by connecting them with prospective vendors. Today, we're announcing 2 strategic investments with industry leaders, Realtair and CampaignAgent. These businesses, combined with our existing agent promotion products, create a market-leading win listings offering for our customers. I'll cover this in more detail shortly. In India, we took a controlling interest in Elara Technologies, a business which presents an exciting long-term growth opportunity. Turning to the next slide. Fundamental to our success is growing the number of Australians turning to realestate.com.au for all their property needs. On average this half, we received over 115 million visits each month, up 36% year-on-year, with a new record of 125.3 million visits in October. This is more than 3.2x the number of visits of the nearest competitor. Over 12 million people visit realestate.com.au each month on average, up 39% year-on-year. And in November, we set a new record of 13 million people or 65% of Australia's adult population. This was 6 million more people than the nearest competitor. Our app also saw phenomenal usage with an average of 50.9 million launches each month, up 46% year-on-year, and people are spending almost 4x longer on our app compared to the nearest competitor. Pleasingly, 6.5 million Australians use realestate.com.au exclusively for their property needs. Our audience is a powerful source of high intent property seekers, driving more high-quality leads to our customers. Core to our consumer strategy is cultivating lifelong relationships with people right across their property journey. Our unique data provides REA with the ability to deliver highly personalized experiences. In December, we launched our Property Owner dashboard. This experience provides rich information about the key milestones of selling, renting, renovating and financing a property to help people make the most informed decisions. Using the powerful combination of our consumer behavior data, property supply data, content and calculators, owners can now access information personalized to their property on a tailored dashboard. This new dashboard encourages owners to take the next best action for them, answering questions such as whether it's a good time to sell, the value of their property, alternative home loan options and how much could they rent their property for. While very early days, over 100,000 owners have already accessed the dashboard to consider the next step in their property journey. The strength of our relationship is demonstrated by the 52% increase in properties being tracked by owners, while the total number of properties being tracked also grew significantly to almost 2.5 million. Turning to our customers. The pace in which the industry is adopting digital solutions post-COVID places REA in an excellent position to connect our customers with more property owners. We know that increasingly, these vendors are coming to realestate.com.au to determine which agency and which agent to use to sell their property. Today, our existing suite of products and features such as Agent Profiles, ratings and reviews and Agent Match help our customers stand out from the competition and generate vendor leads. Building on this offering, this slide illustrates the exciting new ways REA will help agents connect with more prospective vendors and [ win in its ] listing. Our products cover every stage of the prospecting journey. Customers will soon have access to unrivaled demand and property data via our comparative market analysis tool. Through our partnership with Realtair, agents can build customizable presentations to share with vendors and secure the authorities list on the spot. Our new offering will transform the way our customers present themselves to potential sellers. Our partnership with CampaignAgent, owner of VPAPay, the market-leading buy now, pay later solution for vendor-paid advertising, allows customers to provide prospective vendors with choice and flexibility around payment options for their advertising campaigns. This new suite of products has been tested extensively with our customers, receiving overwhelmingly positive feedback. We'll officially launched to our customers in the coming months. Turning to REA's unique data and insights. This month, our Hometrack data business will be rebranded to PropTrack, representing REA Group in market as the trusted leader in property data and automated valuations. The millions of people visiting realestate.com.au create unique behavioral insights into the property market. Our REA Insights experts are combining this property demand data with price and listings data to provide personalized information to customers and consumers. We published close to 200 pieces of expert analysis and reports during the half, while delivering 3 million weekly eDMs to our customers and consumers. A key focus of REA's growth strategy is building next-generation marketplaces. Expanding our rent offering is core to this priority. realestate.com.au is the clear #1 place for rent with over 21 million average monthly visits received to the rent section. This is up 23% year-on-year. Building on our rent leadership position, our vision is to seamlessly connect property managers, tenants and property owners through innovative products that deliver an enhanced consumer experience. As part of this journey, we're centralizing the collection and evaluation of tenant applications on our self-service platform, Ignite. This means consumers will provide and have their application information verified once rather than repeating the process each time they apply through a different agency. Our goal is to make the application process faster and more user-friendly with increased security and privacy protection for consumers. For property managers, we're targeting a reduction in the average time it takes to evaluate applications from 90 minutes to 5 minutes. This new rental application workflow is fully integrated and consumers can now inspect, search and apply directly through realestate.com.au. To-date, we've processed over 4,000 applications using this new integrated process. And while still very early days, feedback has been very positive. We look forward to delivering significant operating efficiencies as we onboard more agencies to these new offerings. Turning now to our international businesses. Across Asia, trading conditions continue to be difficult due to the significant impacts of COVID-19. This, combined with a number of one-off factors, distorted the reported performance of the business. Janelle will talk to this in more detail. Our businesses continue to innovate around the property experience to deliver increased value to customers and more consumer features to help overcome ongoing COVID-19 restrictions throughout the region. Our Malaysian business, iProperty, remains the market leader and grew site business by 35% year-on-year. The recently launched iProperty PRO customer platform saw a strong uptake with 80% of customers migrating to the new way of operating and depth penetration continue to increase despite the market conditions. In Singapore, where we have a 27% interest in 99 Group, the business acquired the well-established property portal and data business, SRX, to further strengthen their competitive position. Pleasingly, 99 Group delivered strong audience growth led by the performance of 99.co and rumah123.com in Indonesia. In December, we are delighted to confirm our controlling position in Elara Technologies, which operates the Indian websites Housing.com, Makaan.com and PropTiger.com. During the half, digital adoption of real estate accelerated with the Housing.com audience growing 57% year-on-year. While our Indian market has been heavily impacted by COVID, we're confident that as more normal conditions return, Elara is well positioned to become India's #1 digital real estate business. Our business in the U.S. had a great half, benefiting from strong consumer demand with unique users and leads reaching all-time highs. This was despite active listing volumes remaining at historically low levels. realtor.com increased average monthly unique users across web and mobile sites for the second quarter by 37% year-on-year to 80 million. At REA, we're committed to continued improvement of environmental, social and governance measures. We've set ourselves ambitious targets. In November, we are delighted to announce a number of key milestones, including the launch of our Climate Change policy and becoming certified carbon neutral from this financial year. Finally, before I hand over to Janelle, a few closing comments regarding current market conditions. Australia's property market has survived many negative predictions for 2020 and shown remarkable resilience despite the impacts of COVID. Today, the market appears to be on the rise again. The signs of a strong recovery include a healthy increase in property transactions and house prices, particularly in regional areas. Across most states, properties are selling faster than they were a year ago and days on market are falling. This momentum is being fueled by increasing consumer confidence, record low interest rates and healthy bank liquidity with the RBA announcing this week even further increases in market liquidity. In January, residential listings in Melbourne increased 12%, while Sydney declined 1% within an overall flat result nationally. We continue to see record numbers of people turning to realestate.com.au. A staggering 128.5 million visits were received in January. This is a new audience record in what is normally a quiet month for property. This was coupled with strong buy demand. Property views for buy listings increased 45% and buyer inquiries were up 66% year-on-year in January. While there is still some uncertainty over the outlook for the economy, particularly as government stimulus measures are wound back, most key indicators are pointing to the property market continuing to rebound in 2021. I'll now hand over to Janelle to talk through our results in more detail.
Janelle Hopkins
executiveThanks, Owen, and good morning, everyone. REA has delivered strong results despite volatile market conditions. Revenue from core operations declined 2% to $430.4 million. This reflects a return to growth in the Australian Residential business more than offset by declines in other segments. Total core operating expenses reduced by 13% for the half, with all cost categories down. EBITDA from core operations, including associates, increased by 9% to $290.2 million, with lower revenue more than offset by the lower cost base. Pleasingly, core EBITDA margin increased to 67%, although the margin in the second half is likely to be lower as we increase investment. Impact from core operations increased by 13% to $172.1 million. The impact results from core operations differed to the reported impact as a number of one-off items have been excluded. These are set out in the table at the bottom of the slide. We'll now turn to trends in the Australian market. On this slide, we've set out the changes in residential listing volumes by month and quarterly dwelling commencements, along with the BIS Oxford forecast to FY '23. As you can see, the residential property market showed continued signs of recovery during the half with national residential listings increasing 4% and Sydney listings up 19%. COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in Melbourne caused significant weakness in the first quarter with listings declining 44%. However, following the removal of these restrictions, the market grew strongly, particularly in December, which is usually a low listings month. Overall, second quarter listings increased by 25% with the half down 11%. Moving to developer. This market saw a year-on-year growth for the first time in several years with new project commencements up 8% for the half. This growth has been assisted by government stimulus, largely benefiting smaller lower-yielding projects. On the next slide, we've set out the key components of the EBITDA movement. Australian residential depth revenue was a key positive revenue contributor with revenue up 4% due to an increase in buy listings, stronger Premiere penetration and continued growth in add-on products. This was partially offset by the impact of COVID-19 support measures and the effect of the prolonged market -- Melbourne lockdown on yield. Rental revenue, which is included in the Australia residential depth category, benefited from increased depth penetration and product mix. However, this was partially offset by a decline in rental listings, which continue to be negatively impacted by lack of migration and restrictions on tenant evictions. Pleasingly, December rental listings trended positively for the first time in FY '21. The Australia residential depth revenue also includes a one-off increase due to a reduction in listings syndicated to MyFun during the half. Unfortunately, we experienced a COVID-19 related backlog in translation. And whilst there was no overall impact to group revenues, the Australian residential revenue includes a one-off increase with a corresponding decrease in the Asian segment. As you can see in the chart, the growth in Residential revenue was offset by declines in all other operating businesses. Commercial and Developer revenue declined 7%, with Commercial revenues negatively impacted by a 26% decline in listings, partially offset by improved depth penetration. As mentioned earlier, Developer benefited from an increase in project commencements, with a larger proportion of these being smaller project launches, which had a negative impact on average yield. Financial Services operating revenue increased by 12% due to higher settlements and improved broker productivity. This was more than offset by a noncash adjustment to the valuation of expected future trail commission, which reduced due to faster loan runoff rates in the current low interest rate environment. In addition, there was also a reduction in partnership revenue as the current NAV performance payments have reached maturity. Pleasingly, the EBITDA contribution from associates was positive during the half, driven largely by the improved performance of Move, which I will cover more in detail -- in more detail later. As you can see, the first half EBITDA was positively impacted by the continued focus on costs, with operating expenses declining by 13% for the half with reductions across all cost categories. As we provide each reporting period, the following slide shows both the penetration and mix of depth listings in the Residential business and the success of our premium listings products. There's no scale on this graph, but the relativities between the categories are to scale. Despite the headwinds the Residential business faced this year with Melbourne listings down 44% in Q1, total depth penetration has held largely steady. During the half, we saw continued growth in Premiere and total depth penetration in New South Wales and Queensland, which has largely been offset by the COVID-19 impact in Vic in Q1. Pleasingly, in Q2, penetration growth returned. Moving to our international businesses. The Asian segment comprises businesses in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Thailand and our Chinese listing site, myfun.com. Revenue for the half was $17 million. As Owen mentioned previously, this result was negatively impacted by a number of factors, including renewed COVID-related lockdowns, cancellation of physical events across all markets, adverse FX movements and a one-off COVID-related reduction in syndicated MyFun listings. The prior period comparatives also include the Singapore and Indonesia businesses, which were deconsolidated on March 1, 2020, as part of the 99 Group transaction. Asia EBITDA before associates and joint ventures was $1.7 million with revenue declines partially offset by continued cost management across the region. Moving to our investment in associates. As Owen mentioned, 99 Group acquired SRX during the period, which completed in December, and will strengthen the group's competitive position moving forward in Singapore. The standout associate for the half was our investment in the U.S. Move's equity accounted result positively contributed to the group, improving from a $1.5 million loss in the prior year to a $9.4 million profit in the first half FY '21. Reported revenue growth of 20% to USD 293 million were due primarily to increased lead referral revenue on the back of strong audience and higher average home values in the half. The result also benefited from continued cost management, including the deferral of marketing costs. In December, we completed the move to a controlling position in Elara Technologies. Our share is 59.65% as of today, with News Corp holding 39% of the remaining minority interest in Elara. The total consideration paid to-date for the Elara transaction is $105.7 million, comprising $49.1 million of cash and the issue of 402,518 new REA shares with a consideration value of $56.6 million. The group has consolidated Elara's balance sheet as at December 31, 2020. The group's half year result includes an equity accounted loss of $2.4 million from Elara. The Indian market was impacted by COVID during the half with revenue declining 17%. Management responded by reducing operating expenses by 24%. Elara earnings will be consolidated from the January 1, 2021, and the expected impact on revenue and EBITDA in the second half is detailed in the ASX announcement. Overall, the EPS impact is expected to be marginally dilutive for FY '21. On the next slide are our operating drawers, which remained open for the half year. Core operating costs declined 13% during the half due to a combination of ongoing cost management initiatives, COVID-19-related savings and the deferral to marketing spend into the second half. We expect second half cost growth will increase as we return to a more normal operating environment and we'll see travel and entertainment costs return as well as increases in marketing, staff incentives and product development. We've continued to invest for the future with CapEx as a percentage of revenue broadly consistent with prior years. This represents the continued investment in product innovation Owen spoke to earlier and our commitment to build for the future. The investment focus in FY '21 is on continuing to improve consumer experience, new product delivery and supporting technology with our investment spend linked to our product roadmap increasing in the second half. The bottom of the slide shows a summary of the group G&A, including a forecast for the second half. We've also included a preliminary range of amortization in relation to the acquired intangible assets from the Elara acquisition. Turning to our cash position. We delivered a strong operating cash flow of $125 million for the half year, which is the addition of the first 4 bars on this graph. Our operating cash flow was negatively impacted by higher income tax payments following the temporary deferral of FY '20 installments as a result of COVID FY '19. All deferred tax payments have now been paid. Strong operating cash flows enable continued capital investment in innovation; acquisitions, including Elara and our smaller equity investments; plus shareholder returns in the form of dividends. Our closing cash position was $180 million at December 31 with our strong liquidity position supported by an additional $149 million loan facility and $20 million overdraft facility. This remains undrawn. Drawn facilities fall due in April '21 at $70 million and December '21 for $170 million. Finally, on current trading. In January, national residential listings were flat with Melbourne up 12% and Sydney down 1%. As discussed earlier, developer revenues are expected to be supported by growth in new developments in FY '21 with BIS Oxford upgrading their FY '21 forecast for new project commencements from minus 5% to plus 7%. However, the higher proportion of smaller projects are likely to impact average yield. Commercial revenues are expected to remain challenged with listings pressure anticipated to continue in the second half. Asia revenues are likely to be negatively impacted for the remainder of FY '21 given severe COVID-19 restrictions likely to be in place in Malaysia for the coming months. Based on the current market outlook and excluding the impact of acquisitions, the group anticipates core operating costs for FY '21 to be broadly in line with FY '20 and operating drawers to remain positive. Second half operating cost growth will increase as the benefits of COVID-19-related savings such as travel and entertainment reduce, alongside increases in marketing, staff incentives and product development. I will stop here. Operator, if we can please now open the line for questions.
Operator
operator[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Eric Choi from UBS.
Eric Choi
analystA great result, as always, so congrats. Just a few for me. First one, just on the cost base. I think we're guiding to 180-ish in the second half. So I just wanted to get a sense of how much of that is, say, a temporary shift in marketing spend? Ultimately, I'm just trying to figure out if that's a reasonable cost level to assume that you guys go into FY '22 with, obviously ex all the temporary marketing stuff. Then just a second question on Slide 19, just the depth penetration stuff. Can we just confirm Premiere penetration was up sequentially in each state and then just the average was down obviously because Melbourne was a smaller part of the mix? Maybe if you could confirm that red bar is up in second half '21 so far, that would be great given all the Melbourne listings have come back on. And then just thirdly, just on revenue deferrals. I guess, originally, we were thinking there might only be a couple of million dollars of drag in the second quarter, but just with that fatter tail of listings, just wanted to check on the materiality of those deferrals.
Janelle Hopkins
executiveOkay. So I'll take all of those, Eric. So on the cost base, you're right, we're guiding to -- expecting the cost to be effectively flat year-on-year. There are obviously some additional costs that are coming back in the second half that really relate to things like staff incentives that relate to pay rises that we've given our staff. Look, we didn't do a pay rise in the first half. We think it's really important that we make sure our staff were incentivized to deliver the exciting roadmap we've got for the second half. There is a combination of permanent savings that we've seen come through in the first half that will continue into the second half, things like we're getting greater efficiency out of our marketing spend. Notwithstanding that, we will be increasing our marketing spend in the second half. Partly consumer marketing, but also customer marketing as well. And we do expect to have events come back in the second half. So look, at the moment, we're comfortable with what we're guiding to around the costs. Obviously, what we've shown over the past couple of years is we can flex the cost base as we need to depending on market conditions, but overall, we're quite optimistic about the market conditions we're seeing coming into the second half. In relation to penetration, obviously we don't give guidance around penetration for each state, but we did see penetration effectively improving. It's effectively flat year-on-year but up, particularly in Q2. And then your question in relation to deferrals, we did see, obviously, the benefit of deferral coming through in Q1. That has been negative -- that's a negative in Q2 because of that stronger December performance. So overall deferral is effectively negligible for the half.
Operator
operatorYour next question comes from Lucy Huang from Bank of America.
Lucy Huang
analystI have 3. So firstly, in terms of listing volumes, so January was relatively a softer month. Just wondering what you're hearing on the ground as we move into February. Are we expecting to see kind of a further uplift in listing volume growth at this point or do you think that it will remain, in terms of a growth perspective, quite flattish in February as well? Secondly, just in relation to Agent Match, I think last time we spoke, you guys mentioned that you may be announcing a monetization plan. So just wondering whether that's been finalized yet and communicated to agents and whether we can get some color around how you're thinking about monetizing that product. And then just my third question. Do you get a sense around any share shift between yourself and Domain over the last half, whether it be by state or region?
Owen Wilson
executiveThanks, Lucy. I'll have a crack at those. In terms of listing volumes, while January is flat, January is traditionally a very low listings month. And I think we've seen a bit of recovery overhang in Melbourne and we're still coming out of sort of that COVID lockdown measure. Anecdotally, agents are pretty bullish, I've got to say, about the outlook for the market. It's true we are -- as you can see from our buyer inquiry numbers, we're in a market where there is a huge demand for property. And in fact, I think to kind of characterize it, I think the buyers are outnumbering the sellers at the moment, but I think that will draw the sellers to the market for sure. It's also worth remembering on a PCP basis that in Q3, we're going to cycle through relatively healthy listings numbers. If you recall in Q3 last year, they finally kicked positive by the Royal Commission and then, of course, COVID hit. But overall, Q3 last year was pretty good. So we're going to cycle against those for this quarter. But then, of course, when we get to Q4, we're cycling against some pretty dramatically low numbers that were heavily impacted by countrywide lockdowns in April and May. So you're going to get some fairly wild swings in terms of percentage growth over the course of this half, but overall, the anecdotal evidence when speaking to customers, they are very bullish. In terms of Agent Match monetization, we outlined our plan to deliver what we think will be a market-leading win listing suite of products to our customers. We're rolling that out to the customers later this year and that will encompass the entire offering around how they win listings using our suite of products. We obviously can't talk about monetization with respect to the customers, but that will be coming later in the coming months quite frankly. And then share shift, this is the hard one. It's hard to measure kind of what's happening with our competitor in each of the markets. We can only go by anecdotal feedback. It's true that we do hear stories of consumers are pushing back on the size of their marketing schedule that the logic of buying the best product on the best site still holds and then the pressure comes on the other items on the schedule, and that tends to see some of the other items move downwards in terms of spend. Yes. The one thing we can measure is audience. We know that our audience lead has extended. There's now -- in November, we had 13 million people and 6 million people more than the nearest competitor. So that speaks for itself, and our customers see that. They see that both -- and obviously, audience numbers, but they see it in the leads that they get from our site compared to our competitors. So where there is pressure, we like to think we're going to hold up.
Operator
operatorYour next question comes from Anthony Matthew Porto from Morgans Financial Limited.
Anthony Porto
analystWell done on another good performance there. We haven't heard much with regards to pricing. I assume that we're still looking at that kind of above-average pricing increase in July there. Just -- I know you spent a lot of time around kind of the audience measurement and product initiatives you've got coming through, and I guess these are the key pillars to driving the ability to continually drive high single-digit cost increases into the future. But I mean, how do you safeguard to an extent against the kind of boycott at Move development happening domestically? And do you think your ability to continue to go kind of high single-digit price increases continues into the future? And then I guess, second kind of overall. Strategically, you've seen in the U.S., Zillow kind of 1.2 to Zillow 2.0. Now I know that we're talking very different markets here, but just internationally around the world you're seeing a lot of these classified sites moving to a more transactional structure from the classifieds. And then I guess that's the next incarnation of classified sites. So just where you guys are placed on that kind of roadmap there? And how do you do that without disenfranchising agents? And I guess, just lastly on the Financial Services, a pretty weak result, I guess, flies in the face of a relatively buoyant refi market. I know you mentioned the coming off of the NAB performance in [ our views ], but just the outlook here. Are you losing share in this space? That would be it for me.
Owen Wilson
executiveIn terms of pricing, we've always seen price increases as a value exchange. And we are very confident that the value that we're going to roll out to our customers around our price increase in July will absolutely underpin that and the value will be there. In terms of going forward, we also have a roadmap of value that we believe we're going to deliver in the coming years, a very strong strategy that underpins that value. And so we're confident that, that value exchange will hold up. We're delivering significantly more views of properties and significantly more leads to our customers and to their vendors and so we feel the value is absolutely there. And in terms of some of the other product developments we're doing around rent and around new listings, again, that is going to deliver significant value. Changing the time it takes to process a rental application from 90 minutes down to 5 minutes is significant value we're going to deliver to our customers. So we're very confident on that. In terms of moving closer to the transaction and the Zillow IBUY model, that's not on our roadmap. And in fact, in the U.S., we have got a deliberate opposite approach. If you go with Zillow in the U.S., you get one flavor. You get one price on an IBUY, and that's the Zillow price. They've only got one loan, which is their own loan. We have gone the other way. We're giving consumers choice in the U.S. So you can look at a multiple of IBUY prices on our sites or you can speak to an agent and get a proper valuation. And so we believe that the monetization of leads to our customers in the U.S., that model is going to create, I think, a very distinctive difference to consumers. We want to give the consumers choice. And quite frankly, Zillow doesn't, and I think you're seeing that in the audience numbers. On the News Corp call, they quoted that we've outstripped Zillow's audience growth for something like 19 months in a row. And so I think consumers are voting with their feet on that one. In terms of [ FS ], I actually disagree with you that it has a weak performance. I think 12% growth in operating revenue shows that we are doing incredibly well. There are some negatives in there around the revaluation of the back book, but that reflects the changes in the market, and that's now factored into the numbers. And the runoff in the NAB contract was always part of that contract in terms of performance payments. So in terms of the core performance and what we can control, I thought that's actually a very good result.
Anthony Porto
analystOkay. I guess I wasn't -- sorry, with regards to the Zillow question, I wasn't really talking about you guys buying -- going that far, but more getting -- involving more of the transactional pie, whether it's potentially taking deposits, et cetera?
Owen Wilson
executiveNo. I mean, taking deposits, that's quite a complicated thing to do with our customers.
Operator
operatorYour next question comes from Kane Hannan from Goldman Sachs.
Kane Hannan
analystJust 3 from me as well. It's obviously something of a big focus on helping agents to win listings, the Realtair, CampaignAgent investments, Property dashboard and then the Agent Match product we've spoken about in the past. Is it right to think that this is all going to be bundled together in one big bang offering that you're going to launch later this year with Agent Match? Or is it more of a suite of products? And just any sort of comments you can say around how we think about the revenue profile of that strategy? Secondly, just around the next round of contracts in July. Given the catch-up price rise, the pretty healthy market recovery we're hoping for this year, just interested how you're thinking about contract lengths and phasing of the price rises and whether that's -- I know you might not be able to comment. And then finally, just commercial and developer trends, just a sense of how that 7% revenue decline in the half would phase across the first quarter and the second quarter.
Owen Wilson
executiveThanks, Kane. I'll take the first 2 and Janelle will take the third one. So in terms of win listings, we have got a very firm go-to-market strategy for that rolling out in the coming months to our customers, and therefore, I'm not going to talk to that for obvious reasons. It's obviously competitively and commercially sensitive. We're very confident that we've got a compelling proposition for our customers that will deliver significant value to them. And therefore, we're really excited about the rollout. But what I will say about that is it will follow -- and I've had this conversation with many people before, it will follow any product rollout that we have and it will take a while for the uptake to mature to where we think we can get it to. You saw that with depth when we first started depth. You saw it with Premiere when we introduced Premiere. You've seen it with Aud Max All, that's taken years to get to the level that it is today. And this suite of products will be no different. It will take time and it will be a -- we anticipate a slow burn, but as with many of our products, as more and more customers get onto it and competitors can see the benefit, then the others follow very, very quickly, the early adopters. In terms of July price, again, we did have a bit of a price holiday here because of COVID. We're very confident in our ability to put the price changes through in July. And again, we've got that value exchange. What I will say is that we don't just take a 1-year view on price. And so we're constantly looking through the numbers for this year and into the following years. And we've got a -- we do have a multiyear strategy on this. And clearly, as you said, obviously I can't actually answering that for commercial reasons.
Janelle Hopkins
executiveAnd Kane, to your question around commercial, so as you can see, as we shared in the ASX, the commercial listings, Q1 was down 27%; and Q2, down 24%. So overall, pretty weak in both quarters. The first quarter was worse. We had the COVID support offers we booked, particularly into the commercial markets in the first quarter. In the second quarter, they started to come off. Pleasingly, we've seen depth penetration in commercial to increase over the half. So it's improved in the second quarter, but overall, it would have -- I would definitely say the first quarter was worse than the second quarter from a revenue perspective.
Kane Hannan
analystThat's worse -- double-digit worse or maybe just trying to get a steer of...
Janelle Hopkins
executiveWe don't -- we wouldn't go into that level of detail.
Operator
operatorYour next question comes from Craig Wong-Pan from CLSA.
Craig Wong-Pan
analystOwen, the first question just for you, in response to another question, you said that you were hearing agents were getting some more pushback on marketing schedules. I was just wondering if that was anymore than normal. And if so, what was being caused by? Was it sort of related to COVID? The second question for Janelle. Just on -- I was wondering if you could possibly quantify the impact that MyFun listings had on the Australian revenues? And then lastly, just on Elara, now that you've got operational control, I was wondering, is there anything that might be changed with how that business is run over there that you might want to do to that business?
Owen Wilson
executiveThanks, Craig. Look, the pushback I was talking about is anecdotal and sporadic. It's true we did see probably a downward pressure on marketing schedules in the depths of COVID as consumers were worried about putting their property on the market and whether there'd be buyers there or whether they would invest in a process that might not have an outcome. It's fair to say, post the lifting of restrictions, that's completely gone away. And as I said, there's no sort of systemic downward pressure on marketing schedules. In fact, it's -- in this market, we're seeing, I think, the opposite.
Janelle Hopkins
executiveAround MyFun, look, it's a small number in the context of our Australian residential revenue, but obviously a bigger number in the context of the Asian result. We're not planning to quantify it.
Craig Wong-Pan
analystAnd then just on Elara?
Owen Wilson
executiveCan you repeat your question on that one, Craig?
Craig Wong-Pan
analystI was just wondering, now that you've got operational control of Elara, I was wondering whether you would be changing anything, like whether that -- how things are run there or just any other changes that might be brought to that business?
Owen Wilson
executiveNone other than we would expect with a business like that coming into REA and that they will now have access to kind of what I'll call our IP and our methodologies, our SEO techniques, our go-to-market, our search, full kind of access to our tech. And similarly, the other way, this is a great business with a really talented team. And I've got to say their tech shops are outstanding. Their speed of bringing new tech to market is quite breathtaking actually. And there's a lot in there that we can take, particularly into our Asian business, but also in Australia. There are things that they do in the Indian business that we don't do here. And there's obviously, as I said, a lot of things that -- a lot of value we believe we can take to that business. So there are great, I think, revenue synergies and market synergies from bringing the 2 businesses together. In terms of day-to-day operations, they've got a great team. They've got a great leader. No dramatic impact or changes there.
Operator
operatorYour next question comes from Entcho Raykovski from Crédit Suisse.
Entcho Raykovski
analystI've got a couple. The first one is on the cost guidance. And I appreciate you've given us quite a bit of color already, but I'm just interested in the rationale behind the change. Given you had been previously guiding to a decline, is it specifically better revenue trends, you've spoken about the environment improving, or is it anything to do with competition? Any sort of color on that would be useful. And then secondly, December was obviously a strong month for listings. So should we expect a level of revenue deferral from Q2 into Q3? Again, if you can't specifically quantify it, any sort of color would be useful.
Owen Wilson
executiveI might take the cost one, Entcho. Look, our previous guidance was flat. And now we've said roundabout similar. And then the reason there is we're giving ourselves a bit of flexibility, but the market is definitely rebounding from -- since we've given previous guidance. We do know that we have sort of cost baked in and coming into our numbers. As Janelle spoke about, we deferred our salary increase on July 1, but we've decided to put that through on December 1, so that's coming through in this half. We know we want to spend more on marketing. We know we want to spend more on product development, but the guidance is roughly similar. We've said flat previously. We're now kind of saying about the same. Now that could be slightly up or slightly down. And we've got great flexibility around our costs as we've proven in the past. So we'll adjust that as we move through the half and get more confidence about that rebound continuing. I'll Let Janelle take the deferral question.
Janelle Hopkins
executiveYes. Yes. Thanks, Entcho. In relation to deferral, you're right, the fact that we had a stronger December this year versus last year does mean that there will be additional deferral going into Q3. So we would expect to see a benefit coming through into Q3. It's always hard with deferral because it also depends on what happens as we close out Q3. So -- but we will see a benefit coming through.
Entcho Raykovski
analystOkay. Great. I was under the impression you've been guiding to lower cost, but maybe it was more semantics rather than anything else. So it doesn't sound like there's been a fundamental shift in the way you've been thinking about costs for the full year.
Owen Wilson
executiveNo. Not at all.
Janelle Hopkins
executiveNo.
Operator
operator[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Paul Mason from E&P.
Paul Mason
analystJust 2 from me. The first one, just on the Australian subscription revenues, it's declined a little bit. It's obviously not material to your overall top line, but is that due to any issues from your side or is that a customer demand-led thing that, that's gone down? And then second question is just on your moving to buy now, pay later. Obviously, you guys were running a pay on sale product through the depths of the pandemic, which I believe has disappeared now. What's driving you to sort of pursue vendor funding of advertising instead of just sticking with that like what appears to be sort of high-yielding product? I think you guys are charging like a 20% premium. And so that sort of looks like it maybe had prospects of driving your yield growth up quite materially over time if you'd stuck with it. Those are the 2 for me.
Janelle Hopkins
executiveSo let me take the one on subscription. Fundamentally, the reason why the subscription was lower this half versus last half is that we've provided an extension to our COVID-related -- in relation to COVID subscription discounts, particularly in Melbourne across residential, commercial and developer, and that went through to October. So that's why it's lower.
Owen Wilson
executiveAnd in terms of our partnership with CampaignAgent, this is about giving consumers absolute maximum flexibility. CampaignAgent's got a product where you can pay instantaneously for your marketing schedule or you can opt to pay later through their financing product. Our view is that making -- taking away the pain of payment and then putting flexibility in the hands of the consumer and our customers on this will help marketing schedules and it may enable larger marketing schedules. So we think that's a great thing. Look, in terms of POS, we brought that in response to some of the uncertainties during the depths of COVID. We learned a lot about that product. It's not in market at the moment, but it doesn't mean it won't be at some stage in the future.
Operator
operatorYou now have a follow-up question from Craig Wong-Pan from CLSA.
Craig Wong-Pan
analystJust one question from me on the developer side. We saw the project launches increased in Q1 and Q2 and you mentioned there were some government stimulus. I was just wondering if you know when that stimulus might roll off and so when that might affect that activity?
Owen Wilson
executiveYes. One of the government stimulus is state-based. So each of the states have got different measures, whether that's stamp duty relief, whether that's incentives for first-time buyers, et cetera. I think on the whole, most of them will be, kind of, I think, out of the market by about the middle of this year. And you can see that in the BIS Oxford forecast. It's now got a positive forecast for this financial year and a negative one for the following year.
Operator
operatorThere are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Wilson for closing remarks.
Owen Wilson
executiveFirstly, thanks, everyone, for joining us today. In closing, we are extremely pleased with the result we delivered. The momentum we're seeing in the property market, coupled with our exciting product roadmap, leaves us feeling really confident and well positioned for 2021. We look forward to seeing some of you in the coming days and, hopefully, even in 3 dimensions. So thanks again, and bye for now.
Operator
operatorThank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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