Schibsted Real Estate Classifieds Revenues Grow 35% in Q2

The Nordic online classifieds operator Schibsted has reported year-on-year revenue growth of over one-third for the second quarter of its 2023 financial year.

According to a company release digital real estate marketplace revenue grew 35% over the three months ended June 30th while revenue for all the company's classifieds assets grew 13% and the company's overall revenue grew 3%.

EBITDA for the real estate marketplaces segment was up 32% at NOKm 128 ($29 million) with the EBITDA margin remaining stable at 43%.

Commenting on the results, Schibsted CEO, Kristin Skogen Lund said:

"Against a backdrop of the current macroeconomic environment, Schibsted delivered a solid quarter with an underlying revenue growth of 2 percent, and a Group EBITDA of NOK 670 million, 8 per cent up from the same period last year."

Schibsted is the Oslo-based media company that spun off online classifieds operator Adevinta in 2019. Although the majority of its online classifieds assets passed to Adevinta, Schibsted retained its classified assets in the Nordic countries.

Schibsted owns and operates the leading horizontal in Norway, Finn.no which is also the country's leading real estate marketplace and accounts for 80% of Schibsted's real estate revenues. It also owns the Finnish horizontal Oikotie as well as the Swedish horizontal Blocket and the rental platform Qasa.

Finn.no enjoys a dominant market position in Norway and Schibsted's impressive real estate revenue growth came largely on the back of a shift in Finn's real estate pricing model which led to an increase in ARPA, as mentioned in Skogen Lund's comments:

"Despite the current market headwinds in the Job vertical, Nordic Marketplaces delivered resilient underlying revenue growth of 9 per cent in Q2, due to strong top-line growth in the Mobility, Real Estate and Recommerce verticals. This was a result of increased volumes in all of the three latter verticals, and a generally positive ARPA development, demonstrating once again the value that we create for our customers and the strength of our market positions."

The company missive did note that on a forex-negative basis, the revenue growth for the period stood at 28% and that Qasa, an end-to-end transactional rentals play in Sweden, remains in its investment phase.