Quarterly Sales Drop 24% at Rent.com.au as Company Looks to Recurring RentPay Revenue

The rental marketplace operator Rent.com.au (ASK:RNT) has released its activities report for Q2 of the Australian financial year. Notable points from Rent's operations for the three months ended December 31st 2022 include:

• Revenue dropped 24% year-on-year to stand at A$607k for the quarter
• The RentPay product saw 13% growth in active customers
• The company had A$3.8m cash in hand following a Rights Issue

The notable drop in revenue was put down by the company to "the impact of seasonality" with the Australian rental market the company operates in seeing a significant decline over the period.

The company said that its main marketplace business continued to be EBITDA-positive in Q2 - its 10th successive profitable quarter. The portal saw an upgrade during the period with both the back-end and front-end of Rent.com.au undergoing a revamp.

Aside from its marketplace, the company has also been continuing to invest in its RentPay convenience product for Australian renters.

Launched in May 2021 after 18 months of development and several years after its original conception, RentPay lets tenants pay their rent via an app while enabling them to build a reliability scoring and a 'buffer' amount to protect landlords.

The product ended the quarter with over 4,000 active customers and was processing more than A$1.5m in rental payments per month. RentPay's revenues are not affected by seasonality and as such, according to CEO Greg Bader, are vital to the company's future.

"With its annuity style revenue streams and far greater addressable market, RentPay is key to establishing the Rent.com.au group as a material and sustainable business. In simplistic terms, there are two primary vectors for RentPay growth - the number of customers and the money we generate from those customers - and we're targeting growth in both."

Bader added that the decision to continue to invest in a product which incurred A$1.8 million in EBITDA losses over the course of the last full financial year is justified precisely because of the seasonality of the portal business.