REA Group Limited (REA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the REA Group Limited Half Year Results 2025 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Alice Bennett, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome, everyone. My name is Alice Bennett, Head of Investor Relations, and I'd like to thank you for joining REA Group's 2025 half year results presentation. Before we commence, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of country throughout Australia and recognize the continuing connection to land, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to elders past and present. Today, you'll hear from REA's CEO, Owen Wilson; and Janelle Hopkins, REA's CFO. Owen will talk to our overarching financial performance and strategic highlights for the half. He will then hand over to Janelle to talk to our financial results in more depth. Following this, we'll then be happy to take some questions. With that, I will pass to Owen to get us started.

Thanks, Alex. I'd like to welcome everyone this morning and also acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we are meeting and pay my respects to elders past and present. Before we get started, I want to touch on my personal news from this morning. After more than a decade with REA and having led the group for the past 6 years, I'm retiring from full-time executive roles in the second half of 2025. The financial results we'll share shortly demonstrates the excellent shape of our business, and I am incredibly proud of all our team has achieved. Our Board has initiated a comprehensive process to select a new CEO, and I want to reiterate that I am committed to the business and will ensure a smooth transition to the new leadership. The future of REA is incredibly bright, and our experienced leadership team will continue to deliver on our exciting strategy. There are many people to thank, but there will be plenty of time for that in the future. And in the meantime, I am delighted to share an update on our first half performance. REA Group has delivered an outstanding first half result with strong yield growth in a healthy listings environment. We saw a more balanced property market during the half as buyer demand kept pace with growth in listing volumes. It was also a half which saw new products released, exciting new features for consumers and further growth in our audience leadership position. Turning to the group results from core operations for the half. Revenue was $873 million, an increase of 20%. EBITDA, excluding associates, was $535 million, an increase of 22%. And NPAT was $314 million, an increase of 26%. The Board has determined to pay a fully franked interim dividend of $1.10 per share, a 26% increase over the prior corresponding period. Before we move into our operational highlights, I'd like to touch on market conditions during the half. The Australian property market remains healthy and reached a more balanced level of supply and demand during the half. Buyer demand has been supported by continued immigration, healthy employment levels and the view that interest rates have peaked. This buyer demand, coupled with steady house prices, has given vendors the confidence to bring their properties to market. New national listings were up 5% year-on-year and were 8% above the 7-year average. As you can see on the chart on the left, listings in the September quarter were well above the 2023 and 7-year average. As we move into the December quarter, this growth moderated, but remained above the very strong comparables of the prior year. Nationally, total listings increased 5.5% year-on-year, led by growth in Sydney and Melbourne. Buyers are embracing more choice in the market, and demand remains healthy. The chart on the right demonstrates a view of national buyer inquiries, which are up 4% year-on-year with 2.2 million inquiries each month. In September, we made changes to our buyer inquiry experience, shifting it behind our membership login. This change encourages members to interact with inspection-related features without needing to make a direct inquiry. Inspection interactions were up 36% year-on-year. And while this partially reflects the change in experience, inspection interactions are a powerful indicator of buyer intent. Turning to the numerous highlights from the half. Our highly engaged and loyal audience continue to return to realestate.com.au with an average of 11.3 million Australians visiting our leading platform each month. Our personalized owner experiences are a key driver of seller leads to our customers. 4.2 million properties are now tracked by their owners on our platform, and around 45% of all seller leads are generated through these owner experiences. We achieved record Premiere+ penetration in Residential and record Elite Plus penetration in Commercial. After a successful year of our white label partnership, in October, we completed the acquisition of 19.9% of Athena Home Loans. In India, our focus on delivering the country's leading app experience or Housing.com achieved 37% year-on-year growth in app traffic. We continue to evolve our operations to ensure we have the right mix of skills and technology in place to support our future growth. In the half, we are pleased to launch our new innovation hub in India, and to centralize our Philippines-based teams with a strategic partner. These capabilities will allow us to scale quickly and create efficiencies across the business. REA's purpose is to change the way the world experiences property. And our strategy centers on engaging the largest consumer audiences, delivering superior value to our customers and leveraging unique data and insights as we expand our core business and build next-generation marketplaces. Reflecting the growth of our business, we've evolved our strategic priorities. We've established dedicated pillars for customer advertising and value and customer platforms and services, which you can see on the right. The acquisition of Realtair and Campaign Agent has significantly grown our platforms and services offering. I'll now provide highlights for the half across our key strategic areas. Turning to our audience, realestate.com.au is Australia's #1 address in property. During the half, the platform further extended its leadership position with a unique monthly audience growing 14% year-on-year. 5.1 million more Australians visit our site every month compared to our nearest competitor. Australians visited realestate.com.au almost 131 million times on average each month, and our app first strategy delivered an increase in our app visits lead to 5.5x our nearest competitor. More Australians are turning to REA for all of their property needs, including our commercial and property research platforms. realcommercial.com.au is Australia's #1 place for commercial property. The platform attracted 1.5 million visitors on average each month, which is 2.7x more visitors than the nearest competitor. Property.com.au is Australia's most comprehensive property research destination. The site was relaunched in 2022 and underwent a brand refresh in reaching almost 2 million average monthly visitors. The strong 34% year-on-year increase in unique audience consolidated property.com.au's position as the #3 property website in the country. Our membership strategy underpins our consumer experience and is key to unlocking additional value for customers. Our owner experience is key to the delivery of quality seller leads, and we achieved an impressive 88% year-on-year increase in leads delivered to customers. While the number of properties tracked by their owner also increased 29% year-on-year. In December, we released an enhanced owner experience, enabling owners to more easily update their properties' attributes. As a result, 9,000 property attributes were delivered in that month alone, supporting the accuracy of those owners real estimate valuations. I mentioned previously that our buyer inquiry functionality has shifted behind our membership login. Since this move in September, buyer inquiries have generated over 20% of our new membership registrations, meaning our customers will ultimately receive higher quality and more detailed inquiries. Inspections are a pivotal moment in the property journey, and our experience encourages members to register before they attend. Inspections added to plans increased 29% year-on-year, providing our customers with increasingly valuable insight into demand and their listings performance. Last quarter, I touched briefly on the next generation of our property listing experience. Our aspiration is to set a new global benchmark as we move from static listing information to a dynamic property experience, inspiring deeper discovery and connection. This initiative will be delivered in 3 phases: the spring release focused on improved agent branding and image enhancements. Since launch, we've seen a 91% increase in consumers viewing all images, videos and floor plans within a listing, demonstrating the deep engagement generated by these enhancements. We're currently working through the summer release. This phase is underpinned by a major replatforming delivery, which also sets us up for future enhancements. It also includes the integration of building, pest and strata reports, project profile construction status updates and a new Quick Apply feature for Rent. Quick Apply leverages personalization to offer a streamlined workflow for renters. Since launching just over a month ago, 20% of rental applications in this peak rental period have been submitted through Quick Apply. Phase III is incredibly exciting. And while I can't give too much away, it will unlock new customer value with more immersive and personalized consumer experiences and deeper financial services integration. I look forward to continuing to sharing future updates. Turning to customers. Record Premiere+ penetration supported exceptional yield growth in our Residential business, while our top-tier commercial depth product Elite Plus also achieved record penetration. Luxe, our high-performance listing solution, has been in market since July and has demonstrated significant value for our customers and their vendors. Properties listed with Luxe add-on received double the number of views compared to a Premiere+ listing. Looking at highlights from our customer platforms and services, our Pro subscription enhances the value delivered across legacy services and agency marketplace. The value in Pro is in [ access ] to exclusive tools and services, which support agents in generating new business. This includes our CMA, which saw monthly users more than double year-on-year. From a branding perspective, Agent Elevate helps agencies stand out to prospective sellers and delivered 19% more brand exposure compared to our Flexi subscription. In June, we acquired the remaining interest in Realtair, and we're very pleased with customer engagement on the platform. New customer acquisition, coupled with deeper engagement of existing customers has helped drive a 28% year-on-year increase in weekly active Realtair users. Campaign Agent has also performed exceptionally well with strong growth in agency sign-ups, along with a 41% year-on-year increase in Campaign Agent-funded campaigns. Turning to our Financial Services business, market conditions have continued to improve with submission volumes increasing 13% year-on-year. and we should see this momentum flow through to settlements. The combination of product innovation and brand investment continues to drive revenue growth and deliver value for brokers. The enhanced integration with realestate.com.au supported a 47% year-on-year increase in broker leads generated through the platform. Mortgage Choice Freedom continues to be the main driver of our growing white label penetration, and there was strong growth in Freedom settlements in the half. Moving to our international operations, competition in India intensified with competitive pricing, an ongoing battle for talent and the need to invest further in marketing. We believe apps are the future of the Indian property experience, and investing in the app is our priority. This has impacted our web audience with declines in web traffic year-on-year. We're confident in our strategic focus on app prime experience, and the chart on the top right demonstrates strong long-term growth in our sessions, with Housing.com easily outpacing competitors. We released a number of new app features in the half, which helped drive an increase in Housing.com's share of app downloads and a 37% year-on-year growth in app traffic. Enhancements included a new search experience, which enables consumers to better filter their search and explore the neighborhood map capability. And we're now leveraging WhatsApp to reengage users and connect buyers with sellers. Housing.com also expanded its geographic footprint, entering 7 new Tier 2 cities, taking the total of number of Tier 2 cities to 20. Before I hand over to Janelle, I'd like to share a few comments on the market as we look ahead. Ongoing high levels of employment and strong population growth, along with the expectation of at least 1 interest rate cut in the first half of 2025, will support the health of the market. The recent weaker-than-expected inflation numbers make an interest rate cut even more likely. With higher levels of stock on the market, we expect home price growth will continue to moderate in some markets. However, buyer demand remains strong and high levels of sales activity are likely to continue to support vendor confidence and the listings environment. In this healthy property market, the value of our premium customer products and the delivery of our next-generation consumer experiences will continue to drive growth for the remainder of the year. I'll now hand to Janelle to share more detail on our results and provide further insight into market conditions.

Thanks, Owen, and good morning, everyone. REA has delivered an exceptional results, underpinned by strong yield growth in all our major businesses. From our core operations, revenue increased 20% to $873 million. Operating expenses increased 18% to $338 million. EBITDA, excluding the results from our associates, was $535 million, up 22%. And the group delivered NPAT from operations of $314 million, up 26%. The group results from core operations differ from reported statutory results with a number of one-off items excluded. On Slide 21, we provide a summary of the reconciliation between the core and statutory results, with the biggest driver of the variance reflecting the sale of the group's investment in PropertyGuru. Turning to our Australian Residential business and trends in the market. Our Residential business had another impressive half with revenue growth of 21%, driven by double-digit yield growth and stronger listings for both buy and rent, with no impact of deferral. National new buyer listings increased by 5%, with growth slowing from 7% in Q1 to 4% in the second quarter. As expected, Melbourne and Sydney market slowed in the second quarter to 2% growth, whereas Brisbane and Perth continue to outpace up 4% and 18%, respectively. Buy yield continues to be the biggest driver of our residential performance, up 14% for the half. Yield was driven by a 10% average Premiere+ price rise, year-on-year growth in overall depth and Premiere+ penetration, growth in add-ons, largely Audience Maximiser and Luxe; and a 1% positive impact from the consolidation of Realtair. This was partly offset by a 1% drag from [ geo ] mix, which increased from Q1 to Q2. Our rent business also delivered strong year-on-year growth. benefiting from double-digit yield growth, driven by an 8% price rise and increased depth, 6% growth in listings. Following slide shows both the penetration and mix of paid depth listings in the Residential business and the success of our premium listings products. The first half saw a record Premiere+ penetration, with growth in all major states. We saw record total depth penetration with both sequential and year-on-year growth. While it's very early day for Luxe, our premium listings add-on, penetration is tracking in line with our expectations. We also continue to be pleased to see the Luxe take-up across properties of all values, with properties less than $3 million making up over 50% of Luxe listings. But before moving on, I just wanted to flag a reclassification that we've made, which has shifted developer display revenues from media, data and other, which is now known as other, into Commercial and Developer. We've done this to provide a more holistic view of the Developer business. Slide 37 of the appendix provides a history restated based on the revised classification. Commercial and Developer revenue increased 10% to $110 million. Commercial revenue increased by 19%, driven by an average 12% price rise, increased depth penetration and higher listings. Developer revenues were up 4% on the prior year, with increased project profile duration and a price rise from the 1st of July and increased display revenue more than offsetting the 1% decline in project commencements. Other revenue was up 9% to $43 million, driven largely by Campaign Agent, which benefited from listings growth, increased customer numbers and greater spend per customer. This growth was partly offset by lower PropTrack revenue, with yields impacted by an increasingly competitive market and lower programmatic media display revenues in a soft advertising market. Financial Services revenue increased 13% to $41 million. The recovery in volumes we've began to see from Q4 last year continued into this half with settlements increasing 6%. Revenue was further supported by increased penetration of higher-margin white label products and productivity uplifts across the broker network. REA India delivered 46% revenue growth. As the chart on the left-hand side shows, this was largely driven by revenue from adjacent services on Housing Edge, which more than doubled due to increased customer acquisition and usage and a price rise from Q2. Growth for Housing Edge in the second half is expected to moderate with additional product controls introduced this quarter. Housing.com revenue was up 15%. We've continued to see customer volume growth from stronger events and improved monetization in Tier 2 cities that we've entered over the last few years. We've also seen increased competition in pricing and packaging, which has slowed Housing.com's yield growth during the half. PropTiger revenues declined by 26%, reflecting reduced volume of stock and lower commission rates in the strong property market. India operating costs increased by 24%, largely driven by revenue-related costs attached to Housing Edge Rent Pay on Credit offering and to a lesser extent, by higher marketing spend. The core India EBITDA loss improved 27% to $14 million. Despite this first half improvement, we still expect FY '25 EBITDA losses to be only marginally lower than the $36 million in FY '24 due to phasing of costs across the full year. Moving to our strategic investments. Total losses from equity accounted investments for the year was $15 million, which compares to $13 million in the prior year. Move's contribution was a loss of $11 million, flat year-on-year. Move's revenue was flat, with growth turning positive in Q2, up 2%. Macroeconomic conditions in the U.S. remain challenged, resulting in lower transaction volumes and a 1% decline in leads. However, this has been offset by revenue growth in seller, new homes and rentals. For more information on Move, please refer to the News Corp results release. Losses of some other equity accounted investments increased to $4 million from $2 million in the prior period, reflecting new investments in Athena Home Loans and Arealytics. On the next slide is our core operating jaws. As you can see, we delivered open jaws for Australia and the group. Group core operating expenses increased 16% and Australian costs by 13%, excluding the impact of the Realtair acquisition. In Australia, this reflected a number of key factors. The largest driver was employee costs, impacted by wage inflation, headcount driven by investment into strategic initiatives, which we accelerated from the second half of last year; and higher incentives, given the first half strong performance. This is followed by marketing costs, which were elevated in half 1, with our new marketing campaign [ Keep Moving ], launched in July during the Paris Olympics; and COGS, which related to Audience Maximiser. Including Realtair, group operating costs increased by 18% and Australian operating expenses increased by 16%. As highlighted earlier, the group continues to invest and to support ongoing growth with investment focused on a number of new products and experiences across multiple lines of business. Some areas of spend included enhancing our consumer experience, investment into AI and personalization in the first phase of our next-gen listings. CapEx to revenue was 8% in the first half. We continue to anticipate a rate within our 7% to 9% range for FY '25. FY '25 depreciation and amortization is expected to be in the range of $131 million to $137 million. Turning to our cash position. We ended the half with strong closing cash balance of $338 million. The group delivered operating cash flows of $325 million This, along with the $277 million of net proceeds from the sale of PropertyGuru, allowed us to continue to invest in the business organically and through M&A, delivered strong shareholder returns in the form of increased dividends and pay down debt, with the remaining $209 million of our external debt facilities repaid in December 2024. Our balance sheet is incredibly healthy, providing flexibility for future growth ambitions, both organic and through M&A, should the right opportunities arise. Finally, on current trading. January new listings were up 3% year-on-year, with listings growth accelerating in the second half of the month. This was the highest January listing since 2018, indicating a continued high level of seller engagement. While listing growth rates are notoriously hard to predict, as we look ahead, the potential impact of the timing of national public holidays in April, the anticipated federal election and ongoing tough comps from the prior year should all be considered, particularly for the Q3 and Q4 quarterly splits. Our expectation for double-digit FY '25 residential buy yield growth remains unchanged. The magnitude of the growth may be impacted if the negative drag from geo mix continues across the remainder of the year. We continue to target positive operating jaws in FY '25, low double-digit Group core operating cost growth is now anticipated compared to high single digits previously. This reflects increased revenue-related costs, including employee incentives and COGS related to Audience Maximiser in Australia and Rent Pay on Credit in India. Phasing of group operating expenses, particularly from marketing campaigns and employee costs, is expected to result in lower year-on-year growth rates in the second half compared to the first half. EBITDA losses in India are anticipated to be marginally lower in FY '25 compared to FY '24, and contributions from combined associate losses in FY '25 are anticipated to be modestly higher than the prior year, reflecting new investment in Athena Home Loans. On a final note, we've had an outstanding start to the year. Whilst we are facing more challenging comps as we head into the second half, we remain positive about the opportunities ahead, and we'll continue delivering more value to our customers and driving yield opportunities across all our business. We will, as always, remain focused on investing prudently across our Australian and Indian businesses to drive growth for FY '25 and beyond. I'll stop here. Operator, can we please now open the lines for questions?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is going to come from the line of Eric Choi with [ Barrenjoey ].

Not a question, first, I just wanted to tell -- Owen, just want to go on record and say, I think you're one of the all-time greats, plus you're a good bloke. So you're going to be missed, and I just wanted to say thank you for all your efforts as well. But just on to the question...

Thank you, Eric. Very kind.

Yes. Anyway, it's kind of a mixed day today. But anyway, on to the question, just first one, I guess, related to that. 10 years seems like a nice round number to leave on. So I'm just wondering, is the timing as simple as that rather than people trying to second guess other reasons? And maybe this seems like an appropriate result in that 10 years for you to reflect on what you're most proud of. And then if it's one of your final Q&A, we've got a few listing went in, and so January is obviously pretty good, shows listings up on the 6-year average, but in line with FY '18. if we do some math on that, it sort of suggests second half listings growth could be flattish and maybe low single digit for FY '25. And I know I'm breaking the rules here, but just on costs in jaws, obviously, you're taking costs up because of higher revenues. And I just go historically, you're hesitant to let jaws widen more than 4% to 5%. So can we read into that lift in cost guidance as you would have been on track to do more than or potentially more than 4% to 5% jaws, if you hadn't upped cost guidance?

Thanks, Eric. On the first part of the question to 10 years and sort of why now, that type of thing, it will be almost 11 by the time I go. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. I'm going to be around for a smooth transition. I'm not actually going to do anything. It doesn't mean I'm fully retiring either. I'm just not doing exec roles. Look, I am incredibly proud of my time here. This is a bittersweet announcement because this is the most wonderful place to work with the most wonderful people. And yes, there have been a few [ cheers ] in here, probably mostly for me. What am I proud of? It's got to be the team. We've got the most extraordinary team here at REA and the culture that we have inside this business, it is something that can't be replicated. It's going to be [ enduring ] and sort of permeates. I didn't create it, I inherited. I'm happy enough that I've kept it, I think, pretty healthy. But I think that's the thing I'm very proud of. I'm really -- if you think back 6 years, if you go back in time and look at our consumer experience, compare it to what it is now, we have done an amazing stuff with our consumer experience. Our audience lead compared to 6 years ago is incredible. Our customer value that we've got with like Pro, Ignite, Campaign Agent, Realtair, again [indiscernible]; so I'm really proud of all that. And all of those are enduring and will keep going long, long after I'm gone. And I have to I have to say, as a shareholder, I'm really happy with the shareholder value we've created as well over that time. I will note that on day 1 of -- when I took over, it was $72 a share price. So proud of that as well. Look, in terms of your listings question, January was very healthy. And anecdotally, look, our market comes back straight after the Australia weekend when most of our customers are back. And for the -- my [ safe search ] is there have been a lot of listings come on since then. I think I said it at the quarter results, and it's still stands true now. I think this is one of the healthiest markets I've seen in my time at REA. And it's because there are a lot of buyers and there are a lot of sellers. And if there are a lot of sellers, that means there's stuff for the buyers to buy and then they can sell their properties. And so I think that's what you're seeing here. I think there's not a person in the country that thinks we've got a rate rise coming. It's just a matter of when we get our rate cuts. And so -- but it is healthy and healthy. It was healthy last year. This is as healthy. And so we are going to be lapping some really strong comps over this half, particularly in Q4. And the other thing that's going to come into play after listing is, I think, the Q3 versus Q4. So as I sit here now, Q3 is looking very, very good. And -- but then when going to April, we've got that Easter, Anzac Day combo, where there's kind of 2 weekends in a row, where you don't want to be selling your house and particularly doing an option because everyone is going to be on holiday. So I think you'll see April, and then it's a matter of when does the election fall. And if that's in May, as it might be, then you're going to have sort of a couple of months there where we might have sort of temporary [ weakness ] against some tough comps. So those listings won't be lost, they'll be deferred, either brought forward or pushed back. And if they bought forward, then it makes an even stronger Q3. So all in all, against those comps, flat would be an outstanding outcome and [ largely ] down is probably also a great outcome, given now how the market is. I'll let Janelle take the cost question.

Yes. Look, we don't necessarily have a view around wanting to not have the jaws widen or shrink to a certain number. When you think about how we set our budgets, we always target to have the jaws open. And as we went into this year, we thought listings were going to be flat, and that was our best assumption and set our cost base knowing that and expectations of revenue and set the costs lower accordingly. As we've upped the guidance today, that is just purely revenue related. So it is things like stronger performance in Audience Maximiser, a stronger performance in Housing Edge, which has that associated -- COGS associated with it. And as we set the budget again around performance incentives, we had a certain assumption and we're doing better than that. So we're increasing the incentives associated with that. So -- and where we'll land on jaws will obviously, again, depend what happens around second half and the listings, as Owen talked about, which will be notoriously hard to predict. But at the moment, looking pretty good.

Our next question is going to come from the line of Entcho Raykovski with E&P.

Owen, I'm assuming you'll get to present at least another quarterly result, but all the best for life. I'm sure it's these questions you'll miss the most, right, how are you going to deal without having to deal with analysts. Anyway, so my two questions. I'm just -- personally, I'm curious, do you think your domestic competitive position has strengthened over the last 12 months? I mean, it certainly seems to be, based on the audience data you're presenting today. And so my question related to that is, will the competitive position be the key factor you take into account when you set pricing from July?

Where we are versus the competition is a small input really to what we think about for pricing. I think if anything probably has improved, audience is one of the key indicators. You'll get a better lens on that when our competitor presents their results in a couple of weeks and you compare revenue growth rates and depth, penetration, things like that. When we think about pricing, we always price to value. We price to the value that we can bring to market. But also, we have a lens on sort of what else is with our other products, things like Luxe, for example. So we've said our aim is double-digit yield through the cycle, and we don't -- we stand by that. But there are so many factors that come in to the pricing consideration. And don't forget, it's not just one price. There are 150 price zones across the country, and they will vary considerably, depending on what's happening in each of the markets. So competition is a small factor.

Okay. And then the second question, you've obviously spoken about the environment. But you've also shown on Slide 6, the increase in first half listings versus than 7-year average, and there's an even greater increase in Sydney and Melbourne. Do you think that there are reasons why these things can be structurally higher than recent history? Or do you think that over time, the best assumption is some sort of reversion back to that 7-year average? And if there are -- if listings are structurally higher, can you maybe talk to some of the reasons that could be driving this?

What I would say is that we've talked for a long time about structural decline in listings, and that's going back 10, 15 years. I think that structural decline is over, I don't think that's continuing. And if you -- the best lens on that, you've got to take out the noise of COVID and Royal Commission, et cetera. But if you sort of look at a 5, 6-year average, and you look at those numbers and a little bit of smoothing here, it's kind of being flat and maybe it's starting to tick up. I don't think there's a structural increase happening in environment as well. I think what you're seeing is sort of sheer weight of numbers in terms of the number of houses, houses that exist now versus 5, 6 years ago. I think the conditions, as I said earlier, very, very good for both buyers and sellers, which is a great market. And I don't see, in the short term, what's going to knock that off. Interest rates aren't going up. I don't think unemployment is going through the roof in Australia. We still have to have immigration. And at some stage, we're going to get the conditions for more construction. We've got a housing shortage. So really, the number is something like 1 million houses short. So all of those would point that maybe there's some structural increasing listings over time, not significant. But I think the structural decline that we used to speak about is well gone.

Our next question is going to come from the line of Kane Hannan with Goldman.

Just regarding the prior comment, Owen, thank you for everything you have achieved. Maybe also two. Just the decision to retire, Owen, in the second half, do you think you would have made that decision if you hadn't been successful with the right move of late last year? Or is there anything we can read into that in terms of implications of REA's ongoing interest in Rightmove?

I wouldn't read anything into it in relation to Rightmove. It's -- there's a whole bunch of factors that are guiding into the decision. One of the things I will say, if you know me, you know how I'm wide, if we weren't firing, I wouldn't have been able to make this decision. That's sound [ weird ]. Rightmove has had no impact on that whatsoever. This is a personal decision. There are other things that have been put in front of me over the last year that I haven't had a chance to look at and, now I get a chance to look at them. So it's more personal. And the fact that REA is firing, it's a good one to step away.

Yes. That's perfect. And then just disclosing Luxe on that penetration chart, I mean, you guys have never really disclosed anything on that chart that hasn't ultimately become the majority of your listings. Mean that's how we start with Luxe? Or what's the -- obviously, we appreciate the disclosure, but so just how significant that was to buy a yield in the half? Any sort of color you can share?

Very small.

Very small impact. Yes. I think the reason we put that line on the chart, I'd like to think, whoever is presenting these results in 3 years' time, we'll be talking about, I don't know what color it will be, but there'll be a different color on that chart as penetration increases. The most pleasing aspect of Luxe for me is the fact that we've now got the proof point of double the views. And so for an agent sitting in the living room, talking about whether you want the Luxe add-on and you can say quite confidently you'll get double the views if you buy this product, it will make it more compelling. Now we've got to get those proof points out there. So I do see penetration in Luxe going up. I do see it having a more meaningful impact on our results in the years to come. And it will be one of those ones that it will be slow burn. And then all of a sudden, competitive tension market by market, will start to say, "I need to have this in my toolkit to win the listing." So we're very excited about it. But no, it hasn't had a big impact on yield in this half.

Our next question is going to come from the line of Nick Basile with CLSA.

Just two questions. The first one, just on the cost base and the marketing expense in the first half. Obviously, you called out Paris Olympics. Just wondering, what are sort of the key line items to think about as slowing growth to hit that low teens cost growth guidance or low double digit, I should say, in the full year? And then second one, just a follow-up, I think, really to Entcho's question on listings in general. Is there perhaps a breakdown in parity with domain in terms of their ability to get a similar total number of listings and therefore, you're benefiting structurally at the moment or on a go-forward basis?

So on the marketing and the phasing of the growth, so that's predominantly because in the second half of last year in marketing, we did quite a lot. Particularly in Q4, we had about 3 marketing campaigns in the second half last year, whereas more of the marketing has been phased to the first half of this year. So there's a phasing from a marketing perspective. And then from employee costs, you might recall back in 2023 when we're coming out of a tough year, we didn't start to increase our strategic investments to the second half of the year. So there was more investment weighted to the second half of the year in employee costs. And then that said, flowed through into this year. So when you get to the second half this year, we'll see a lower rate of cost growth. So it's more phasing related, and that's how we come to the expectation around that low double digit for the full year.

On your listing question versus [ competitor ], there hasn't been a lot of change in that. We track the volume of the things that we have exclusively that hasn't moved around a lot. I know they've had a sort of win back listings campaign to try and get listings back on their site. And our total listings is probably not the number. It's how many have actually been paid for from a denth perspective. That's the number we should be comparing to and how much debt is being paid for versus given away more bundled. I think it is a structural difference between our 2 businesses, particularly outside Melbourne and Sydney. But there hasn't been a lot of change in that in this current half.

Our next question is going to come from the line of Siraj Ahmed with Citigroup.

Just two questions. The first one, just on -- maybe one for Janelle. Just on the yield growth in Australia, it looks like it's lowered in the second quarter, a bit surprised, given Luxe should have been growing. Can you help us with that? And then second one, Owen, just on India, a bit surprised that Housing is actually only growing at 15% now. I think 99acres called out 17% growth in this quarter as well. So just keen to understand what's just the dynamics there on Housing.com.

Yes. On Luxe, there wasn't a substantial increase in yield impact between the first quarter and the second quarter. So that didn't have an overall impact. And we only saw a small decline in overall yield from Resi between Q1 and Q2, and it was actually really geo mix and rounding. So we called out 1% geo mix for Q1 and 1% for the half. But Q1, it was a little bit less than 1%. And for Q2, it was a bit more than 1%. So it's still rounding to 1, but we just saw geo mix be a little bit softer in the second quarter versus the [ first ] quarter. So that was the key reason for the very, very small on decline in yield in Q2 versus Q1.

And on the differential between Housing.com and 99 in India, it's very hard to compare. They're not like-for-like businesses. They're in different geographies to us. So it's not a direct comparison. I mean the growth has been slightly higher than ours. Well, I don't think that's a significant difference for the businesses. And what you're seeing there is probably noises around the different geographies. The different strengths in each of the geographies, there are markets where they would say the #1 and we were 2, and then there are markets where we're #1. And depending on that split, those numbers can move around a bit.

Our next question is going to come from the line of Tom Beadle with Jarden.

Just a couple on yield from me. Just firstly, can I just follow up on Siraj's question? I guess just on geo mix, like how do you think the comps compare in the second half on geo mix to, say, the second quarter, where there was obviously that small drag? And then just the second -- my second question is just are you seeing any benefit in your yield from time on market increasing a bit, which might be driving some relistings, for example?

Yes. Look, we're not seeing any benefit from yield from time on market. Time on market has only gone up marginally, so not substantially. And because of the fact that we've got the majority of our customers on Premiere All, that's effectively until it sells. So there's a really small impact around that. Geo mix, look, it's always hard to predict geo mix. As we're starting to see the rest of the country, even up to Melbourne and Sydney, it should still even out. What we have flagged is when you look at Q1 and Q2, there, there are about minus 1, minus 2. The previous bookends have been somewhere between minus 5% to positive 3%. If it's in that sort of small minus 1, minus 2, minus 3, that wouldn't be a bad outcome. But it's super hard to predict. It really just depends on where the listings are and also even where they are within Sydney and Melbourne. Sometimes, we have more listings in the outer suburbs that can have a bigger negative impact on geography mix.

Our next question is going to come from the line of Tim Plumbe with UBS. Tim, your phone could be muted. All right. We'll move to the next question and see if rejoined. Our next question is going to come from the line of David Fabris with Macquarie.

Look, I was just wondering, can you talk us through how you think about price rises for the Australian trailing Residential business and why higher rises versus recent wouldn't be considered? I mean we look at the value that you're creating and the comments around the healthy market, insights on that would be helpful, please.

I can speak on the level of price rise, we're going to put through this year. But as I said before, there's a whole combination of the books that we have. And we don't just take a single view on pricing. We tend to think of this in 3-year increments, looking out at everything that affects yield, whether it be just straight like-for-like price movements for value, whether that be increased penetration of products like Luxe or whether be the contribution from other products like our Pro subscription. And we look at that, as I said, in a 3-year view and plan that out accordingly. And there'll be some years we'll get more of our yield increase in price and other years will be more from product mix and penetration. But we've got to take a multiyear view and we also got to think about the market, what condition that's in and sort of what we've done previously. So there's a bunch of factors into it. So we target double-digit through the cycle, I'll say on what our price will be this year.

Yes. Got it. Understood. And just a second question, just thinking about the balance sheet, is there any consideration at all to cap management like a special [ div ] or higher payout ratio? Is the preference to kind of continue to build cash and consider M&A?

Look, our capital management policy hasn't changed. We've always been about, firstly, repaying debt, increasing dividends as we saw, we increased 26% in our interim dividend for this year; and continue to invest organically and inorganically, which inorganically, we did, even in the first half, with our investment in Athena. Yes, it's nice that we have paid off all of our external debt now, and it's very early days being positive cash. I think if after an extended period of time, there wasn't actually any right M&A, we would potentially -- and if we were going to do it, look at something like a special div.

And our next question is going to come from the line of Tim Plumbe with UBS.

Apologies for before, not sure what happened. Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can.

Okay. Great. Sorry. My question was a little bit of a follow-on from Siraj and Tom's question. But just in terms of the geo mix and the way that it's kind of panned out in the half and how that shapes your thinking for the remainder of the year, has that composition changed much compared to what you're expecting at the start of the year?

We were just really unclear what was going to happen with geo mix. As we said, it's super hard to predict what's going to happen. And that's why we kind of try and give the bookends. Previously, we never really had to talk about geo mix because it didn't have that much of an impact. But with some of the swings around Melbourne and Sydney volumes of listings compared to the rest of the nation, that's when it has started to play around a bit. And that's where we talk about the minus 5 to the plus 3 is the bookends we've seen. If it's at the moment, sitting plus or minus 1% or 2%, it's really neither here nor there for us. And it's just -- will be -- it will be what it will be, depending on where the listings land for the remaining second half of the year.

Got it. Got it. And then just second question, Owen, maybe for you. Appreciate that you're noting that conditions are healthy for both buyers and sellers at the moment. Most people would say that interest rate cut should be net positive. Given your time in the business, how long do you think that normally takes to start flowing through to slightly better conditions?

I think you're seeing them already. So what tends to happen, the anticipation of the move starts affecting the market long before the actual cuts. And I think we're now 5 months into the expectation that the next move was down and when would they cut. And so I think you're seeing that play out in consumer behavior already. People are out buying right now in the market, are doing so expecting that they're going to get an interest rate cut at some stage and maybe 1 and maybe 2, maybe 3 this year. So it's already impacting the market for the positive. I totally agree with you, there's no world in which rate cuts don't benefit the property market. Borrowers can borrow more with every interest rate cut and it gives vendors confidence as well that the buyers will be there. So I think we'll be in a downward trajectory on rates for at least all of this calendar year, which is going to be good for the market.

Our next question is going to come from the line of Roger Samuel with Jefferies.

All right. I've got two. First one is, how do you think about marketing schedule as a percentage of house prices? And given that you're seeing softer growth in property value, do you think that would limit how much you can raise prices in the future? Second question is I'm quite intrigued with Slide 13 of your presentation regarding NextGen listings. And just wondering what's the endgame of this dynamic property experience. Is it going to be a new product or a new tier going forward?

Thanks. In terms of marketing schedule, we really haven't seen any downward -- significant downward movement in property prices. They've softened a little bit here and there. But if you compare them to a year ago, they're still up. So year-on-year property prices are up, and small movements in property prices have almost zero impact on marketing schedules. Marketing schedules are still very healthy. We sort of talk about them running at sort of 0.8% to 1% of the value of the property and sometimes higher. So the movement in marketing schedules, I think, is a net positive for us. And therefore, it doesn't have much impact in the thought processes on our pricing. So the key thing is value. We just need to be able to see across from our customers and say the price has moved for the following reasons because they deliver the most value. And that's kind of segue into your second question in terms of what's coming from the consumer experience. We want to create the most personalized consumer experience so that every single user on our platform will get a different experience based on what they've been doing both on previous visits, but in their current visit. We want to be able to basically predict what they're going to do next and create sort of a much more immersive and engaging experience, which will lead to greater leads and better quality leads for our customers. And so that extra value that we're delivering in terms of the quality of leads, the information we'll provide with the leads, the scoring of the leads and the quantity of those leads, that value underpins our value and our pricing for years to come. So it is very, very exciting what's coming. And we've got Phase [ 3 ] coming. We've got plans way beyond that. So this is going to be one of the key underpinnings of our value for a long time.

Right. And just to follow up on the marketing schedule, I mean have you seen a change in mix still perhaps from [ print ] to REA or perhaps from your competitors to REA with the marketing schedule?

Yes. Look, it varies. I mean, the industrial logic is if you want to sell your house, you probably want the best product on the best portal. What else gets on the schedule varies by geography. In some places, our competitor in [ WA ], they're the #3 portal. It varies. Look, agents typically like to sell everything they can on the marketing schedule. It's good for their branding as well. And so we're -- it's hard to disclose because we don't get all the market schedule. So we actually don't know what's on most other marketing schedules.

And our last question is going to come from the line of Sriharsh Singh with Bank of America.

I've got two questions. One, in Australia, you've got 6 residential listings here. If you include standard listings. Any plans of rationalizing that number down to a more manageable 4 or 5 tiers at some point in the near future? And the second question is on the India business. just a follow-up. How should we read into the performance of the India business? As I see if I look at PropTiger and Housing together, the growth in core India business has now almost flattened out with all of the growth coming from low-margin adjacent revenues. So do you expect the core business to reaccelerate? And if not, is there a risk that losses in India may widen over the next 2, 3 years, given the need to compete?

Well, I'll take that India question. So what you're seeing there in the numbers is PropTiger revenues are actually down. And it's a kind of counterintuitive. One of the things that's happened in the Indian market, it is quite hot at the moment. And you're seeing so many buyers that developers are trying to sell a lot of their stock themselves rather than pass it through to businesses like PropTiger. So we saw a drop in volumes. They also are willing to pay less commission. So we had not only a double whammy of drop in volumes and drop in commission rates, the core housing business actually grew double digit. And we expect that to continue. That business is the core of our business. PropTigers a broking business. Housing is more of a platform business as we've got here in Australia. And so they had very different performance. We add them together, it doesn't look as good, but Housing underlying was quite strong.

And when you look at the categorization, so Luxe is not a tear, it's an add-on to each listing. And there's no current plans to consolidate, but over the current coming years, we may choose to.

Eventually, we've got so many -- so much uptake of Premiere+ where the Premiere continues going forward, that's -- we'll look at that. We're not getting any noise out of the customer base for a change at this stage.

And I would now like to hand the conference back over to Owen Wilson for any further remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. We're incredibly proud of the results that we've delivered in the first half, and I think we're on track for a fantastic second half. I look forward to catching up with many of you over the course of the next 3 days or so. And also, look forward to speak with you at our next results for Q3. Thanks, everyone, and thanks for your kind comments as well. I really do appreciate it.

Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.