I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Cameron McIntyre, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for our CAR Group H1 FY25 results conference call. This morning we've got Will and myself here clearly, and we're going to run you through the presentation in around 30 minutes. We'll also read out the slide numbers like we usually do, and after that we'll jump into a Q&A session in the second half of the call with the rest of the team that's either here with us in the room or on the call at the moment.
So here with us we've got Paul Barlow who runs Carsales here in Australia, SB Kim is on the line, SB runs Encar in South Korea, David McMinn runs Trader Interactive in the United States and he's also on the call, Eduardo Jurcevic, Eduardo runs Webmotors in Brazil, Inés Guitarte you don't have probably met before, Inés runs Chileautos in Chile, and Scully's here as well, Head of Investor Relations with us in the room. So we'll start with slide five, and as you can see we've had a great start to the year as a group. This half's result really builds on the consistent growth that we've delivered over the past many years now and reflects the strength of our globally diverse business model and the value prop that we have for our customers.
for some results on the left side of the page there really are the best reflection of the underlying performance of the company as they normalized for recent exit of our Australian tire business, and looking in constant currency there you can see we've delivered 12% growth in pro forma revenue and 12% growth in pro forma EBITDA, which is an excellent outcome. We've maintained strong EBITDA margin performance at 55%. Adjusted NPAT was up 12% in constant currency as well, which was a great result. Turning to slide six you can see here the consistent growth we've delivered across our key financial metrics, which reflects the execution of our strategy to remove friction points from the vehicle transaction process. You can see here we're investing in new technology and product, which really helps position us well to continue delivering long-term growth in all of our key markets.
Onto slide seven. Yeah, we've continued to see excellent engagement in our marketplaces across the globe to demonstrate the strength of our marketplace leadership positions in each of the categories and the resilience of our diversified business model. Inventory levels overall. They've continued to rise versus the first half of FY24, which reflects the strong competitive position that we have. Yeah, these healthy stock levels. They've helped us to deliver good uplift in ad depth penetration across all of our businesses, and as customers are really looking to seek to move inventory and differentiate their vehicles online. Growing number of subscribed dealers to 49,000 really highlights the strength of the value prop that we have for our dealers and high interest rate environment that we're even in a higher interest rate environment that we're in at the moment.
We delivered 11 million leads to dealers, which was an increase of around 500,000 leads versus PCP, and that really reflects the growth in leads across Australia, Brazil, and South Korea, offset by some soft demand in the United States for recreational vehicles. On to slide eight, and you can see here the breadth of our retail brands that we operate with good diversification across the geographies and verticals that we're in. As we've exited the tire business, we've taken tire sales out of the Australian portfolio, and we've also added some small data businesses that we've got in LATAM and in South Korea.
Part of our strategy here for many years has been about investing in large high growth markets where we can leverage our intellectual property and our tech to create long-term sustainable value for shareholders, and we've been highly effective at that with our international investments over many years with more to come in the future. Onto slide nine, and yeah you guys have seen this one before. It remains consistent. Our teams across the globe, they're doing an exceptional job in delivering on our purpose, which is to make buying and selling a great experience, and that helps to create the number one digital marketplaces for vehicles around the world that we're chasing in our vision.
So look, to deliver on our purpose, our first focus area is to simplify everything about buying and selling vehicles, and as we remove friction points we open up new opportunities to monetize and extend our role in vehicle buying and selling and that journey around all that. So another great example of this is the Australian example where we're making excellent progress in C2C payments, and that initiative is going really well for us and has huge potential, opens up many new opportunities in our other large addressable international markets as well over time, and look I'll come back to that a little bit later in the presentation. Our second focus area is to continue investing in new opportunities which are going to really drive growth and reduce risk of disruption longer term.
This includes growing organically with the in-house product development and innovation stuff that we do, launching new verticals like marine in the United States as you've seen us do. We're also continuing to step up on our focus with AI and to enhance our consumer experience and really drive efficiencies where, and we're making good progress here, but again I'll talk about that a little bit later in the presentation as well. And look, complementing all that organic growth, part of our strategy for many years has been about investing in large high growth markets where we can leverage our IP and our technology to create long-term sustainable value for shareholders as I've just mentioned before, and we've been highly effective at that with the U.S., Brazil, and South Korean investments.
Slide 10. I won't spend any time on this, just to say that these are our strategic priorities and to be clear where they are. We've made great progress on each, and what I'll now do is just run you through each of those bullet points and what we've done. Just looking at slide 11, delivering a large and engaged audience to our customers is really, really critical to the success of our company, and we've maintained or grown our very strong market leadership positions in our four key markets as you can see there on the left. Our strong market positions driven by the compelling combination of audience, technology, and data on the right side of the slide, and it just really showcases the progress that we're making in Brazil there.
We've continued to grow our lead against the number two market player, and in December our traffic was actually four times greater than our nearest vertical peer. Look, historically we've had a very strong market leadership in our two largest cities in São Paulo and Rio, but in the last four years we've increased our focus on growing our market share in tier two cities, particularly in those ones around the southeast and northeast of Brazil, and you can see the investment continues to pay off through the outsized growth that we're seeing and achieving lead volume expansion in those national regions. Onto slide 12, and look, just looking at the left side of the slide there we've continued to make great progress in digitizing transactions across each of our markets. One of the highlights has been the rollout of new seamless finance integration with our partner Santander in Brazil.
Yeah, this improved experience for our customers, but better credit availability in Brazil has also helped deliver a 34% uplift in auto finance revenue in the first half of the last 12 months, and our partnership with Santander remains incredibly strong. Looking at the right side of the slide there with debt, and we've seen great adoption of our debt products across the world as dealers look to differentiate their stock in a more challenging market environment. In Korea, which is what's on that side of the slide there, they're making great progress around guarantee and penetration. As most of you on the call know, the product provides exceptional value for dealers through improving their gross margins and reducing the time to sell by providing increased confidence in the vehicle.
So growth's been supported by the continued rollout of those inspection centers that we have and increasing the utilization of existing centers through things like extending operating hours and the use of AI, and that strategy is really helping us to underpin our growth aspirations for guarantee to be sort of circa 70% of all of our inventory, and we're also working on new guarantee products as well, which is going to help us with that ambition. Onto slide 13 and C2C payments, yeah we talked about this in August, but really helps provide us, our consumers, with a more secure option for the transfer of funds between private buyers and private sellers, and the recent launch of this product's gone really, really well for us, and we've seen significant uptake from buyers and sellers using payments as a solution to easily and securely transact.
We've already facilitated very close to $30 million worth of payments, and yeah we launched the product sort of late last calendar year, and yeah as far as payments go, they really open up significant opportunities for us to transact that ownership phase of buying and the journey that people go on, and if we can get that right there's huge upside potential for us from a financial perspective. A really good live example around that probably to mention is just the insurance deal that we've done recently with a large insurer where they're targeting buyers that are really at the pointy end of the transaction funnel, you know when they're just driving the car off the driveway, and through our payment solution, as you can imagine, we're able to offer a very targeted audience for them.
Look, the technology's been built with the capability to roll it out globally, and we believe it's got really great potential in our other markets as well.
Now I'm just looking at slide 14, and through the acquisition of Trader Interactive, you know media's been a significant opportunity that we've been talking about, and we think it's got great long-term growth potential, particularly given that the business hasn't had much investment in this area prior to our commitment to the company a couple of years ago. And it's been really, really pleasing to see the recent investments in new talent, in product, in technology, and the stronger go-to-market approach that we've had is really paying off for us. And I think we're only really scratching the surface here with what we've achieved over the last six months, and plenty of upside to come over the coming years, particularly as the market continues to improve in the United States.
So just looking at slide 15 and talking about future horizons, and yeah we're really amplifying our focus on AI across each of our businesses, and this gives you a little bit of a snapshot. At a group level we're looking at ways to improve the search experience for consumers and are beginning to utilize natural language search options across our sites. In Webmotors, we've developed an AI-powered agent to engage with consumers to pre-qualify leads really, and that's delivering better lead interaction with our customers and resulting in a much more qualified lead being delivered to our dealer, which is important to us. At Encar we've put in place an AI-assisted customer support for Encar Home, which is improving the consumer experience through reducing the wait times and enabling a 24-hour operation of our home delivery product that we've got there.
At Trader Interactive we've launched an AI spam and fraud lead blocker, which is similar to what we have here in Australia, and that's blocking thousands of leads and fraudulent messages, and it's building trust and confidence and demonstrates our value to private sellers through high-quality leads, and so yeah across the group, yeah we're using AI to detect branding that could result in lead leakage and lost value attribution, which is important that we maintain that, so I expect you'll see us continue leveraging AI over time and delivering enhanced consumer experience, process efficiency, and really try to improve those trust and safety elements. Onto slide 16, and look I mean you've seen us showcase this before, but the sheer number of growth levers that we've got I'm really pleased with.
Our traditional growth drivers continue to deliver good growth, and our new growth drivers are contributing more and more over time. We operate in large markets with attractive attributes, and our current penetration is still under 10%, which gives us significant long-term growth opportunities in each market. So, with that, I'll hand over to Will to talk to you about the financials.
Thanks Cam, and good morning everyone. The group's delivered another great result in the first half of FY25 with another half of double-digit revenue and earnings growth, and importantly we continue to make great progress from a strategic perspective. You can see on slide 18 the growth we've achieved across all segments.
Latin America and Asia are clearly the standout performers from a growth perspective, but we were really pleased with the performance of the Australian and North American businesses, particularly given the impact of higher interest rates in those markets. Cam's going to go into more detail on each of the segments later in the presentation. Turning to slide 19, now the purpose of this slide is to talk to the items below EBITDA in a little more detail. So moving to depreciation and amortization, this largely comprises costs associated with software development, leases, and building fit-outs. The increase you can see here in the period largely reflects the digital investment we're making in software development, and this has been key in helping us to sustain double-digit revenue growth.
Some of the key initiatives we're working on are things like C2C payments in Australia that Cam mentioned before, the wallet product in Brazil which has been a great success, and also our new marine initiative in the U.S. On finance costs there was a small decrease which reflects largely similar debt and interest rate levels between periods. On tax, the group's effective tax rate in the first half was similar to the same half in FY24 at around 18%. This reflects the corporate tax rates in each of our jurisdictions except in the U.S. where we're paying minimal tax, and this is due to the fact that we get deductions for purchase price and tangible amortization, and also we get to utilize prior period tax losses.
Just the net profit of AUD 177 million, great to see that up 12% on a constant currency basis, and it's this combined with our strong free cash flow generation that supported the board's decision to declare an interim dividend of AUD 0.38 per share, which is up 12% on PCP. The group's adjusted results differ from reported results, which we show at the bottom of the page, and that's due to excluding one-off or non-cash items, and in the first half this mainly reflected the non-cash amortization of intangibles and one-off costs associated with our exit of the Australian tires business, and we've got a detailed reconciliation in the appendix. Moving on to slide 20, and it's been another great margin performance from the business with group EBITDA margins at 55%. You can see on the right-hand side of the page the impact of our decision to exit the tire business.
It's resulted in a 3% uplift in EBITDA margins. Excluding tires, our margins were consistent between periods. We've got great operating leverage in the business, and we continue to maintain our disciplined focus around capital allocation and cost management. We're investing some of this operating leverage back into the future growth of the business. On a segment basis, it's great to see three of our segments all growing their margins in Australia, North America, and Latin America, and then in Asia there was a small decline in margins as we've opened new branches and continued to invest in marketing our dealer-direct product as credit conditions continue to improve in that space. Moving on to slide 21 now, look, our asset-light business model consistently generates great free cash flows, and this half was no exception with another good performance over the last six months.
The balance sheet is in good shape with leverage at 1.8 times net debt to EBITDA. Debt levels were slightly higher than June 2024 due to the FX impact that we had on our U.S.-denominated debt, the USPP facilities that we have. On the right-hand side of the page you can see that we also continue to invest in new products and innovations similar to what I mentioned before, and this is really reflected in our CapEx spend on the right-hand side. It's remained consistent as a percentage of revenue over the last six months. Then on to slide 22, which is our outlook statement, and look after an excellent first half, it's pleasing to reiterate our group outlook statement, which is we expect to deliver good growth in pro forma revenue, pro forma EBITDA, and adjusted NPAT in FY25 on a constant currency basis.
In terms of margins with some reinvestment into the business, we expect to see similar pro forma group EBITDA margin in FY25, and then some observations on each market. First to Australia, in dealer we expect to deliver good growth in dealer revenue in FY25, which is supported by growth in lead volumes, depth, and yield. In private, we anticipate solid revenue growth supported by dynamic pricing optimization and instant offer growth. In media, we expect good revenue growth supported by the continued expansion of our native ad products, programmatic capability, and non-automotive diversification, and then looking at our international businesses, and all of these again are on a constant currency basis. In North America, we expect solid growth in revenue and good growth in EBITDA in FY25.
Changing wording on revenue growth was a marginal call as the business is performing really well, as you can see in the first half results. Reflects our decision to slightly delay our annual price rise until peak season for our recreational verticals given these markets have been a bit more challenging, but we will do a price rise before the end of the second half of the financial year. In LATAM, we expect strong growth in revenue and strong growth in EBITDA in FY25, and in Asia we expect good growth in revenue and solid growth in EBITDA in FY25. And now I'll hand back to Cam to talk further about our operational and financial performance in each market.
Thanks Will. Look, before we get into all the financial details, I just want to, I think it's useful to provide a bit of context around the operating environment in each of our markets, so we'll start with slide 24, and the automotive industry in Australia continues to be robust and reflected by the strong audience engagement and demand on the car sales platform that we've seen. Look, one of the things that we're continuing to see is customers becoming a little bit more price sensitive in the last 12-24 months as interest rates have remained elevated, and that's really reflected in the purchasing intent chart on the top left-hand side of the slide there, which shows an increase in preference for used cars versus new cars. As a result of that, our car lead volumes have continued to grow nicely over the last six months.
There's also some interesting data around EV preferences on that slide as well that you can see on the right-hand side. It shows a consistent reduction in consumer consideration for EV, and that goes all the way back to really COVID, and probably I think it's just the market normalizing a little bit more as they have in other markets, and at 30% that's probably not too bad, but just the declining preference has been interesting.
Pricing of used cars is below peak levels but still well above pre-COVID levels, and you can see on the chart here the decline in prices moderated more recently, and given the decline in pricing has been pretty slow and steady, dealers have been able to make and retain pretty good gross margins, and our time to sale has picked up a little bit marginally over the last six months, which has been driven by a slight slowing in the private market after a very booming few years, and look, moving on to slide 25, and it's been a great start to FY25 for our Australian business with revenue and EBITDA growth of 9% supported by continued strength of our marketplace and audience metrics.
Just looking at dealer on the subsegment there, and dealer growth of 10% was driven by good demand for used cars resulting in an increase in lead volumes, yield, and decreased penetration of depth product. Pleasing to see depth penetration continuing to deliver excellent value in a market with more inventory at the moment, so private seller continue to deliver good outcomes for private sellers here, maintain strong market share in what is a flat private market. We've also continued to grow private yield through Dynamic Pricing optimization and continuing to improve the scale of our Instant Offer product too. Media revenue grew 10%, and that's indicative of a competitive new car market, and that's been supported by the significant investment we've made in our media business to deliver more innovative and personalized advertising solutions.
And then DRS, I mean Digital Data Research and Services, I mean that's just 5% up as a result of our RedBook business. Slide 26, and again before talking about the financials, just reflect on some of the things highlighted in the market data here on this slide, and as you can see on the left-hand side of the slide, RV and Power sports registrations for both new and used units. In these recreational verticals in the last two years, they've been challenging from a volume perspective, which is why we're really pleased to see the continued growth that we've delivered in each of these verticals over that same time frame, and also gives us confidence in our growth potential, particularly as these markets emerge from their cyclical downturn.
Audience metrics on the right-hand side of the slide demonstrate that the consumer traffic to our recreational sites has most certainly stabilized, and the truck and equipment markets have been very robust, which highlights the benefits of having a diversified portfolio, I guess, of industries across our business. Turning to slide 27 now, and it's been an excellent start to the year for Trader Interactive with both revenue and earnings growth of 9% despite the challenging macro backdrop in our recreational verticals. So customer numbers here have remained consistent since June, which demonstrates the strength of our value proposition. Growth continues to come from multiple sources. This includes an uplift in Premium Select transactions, yield increases, Dynamic Pricing, and growth in media revenue.
We've also continued to invest in our value proposition for dealers, which means that the business is really very well positioned to drive more growth once market conditions improve over time. On to slide 28 and Brazil. Yeah, again making some observations here. Interest rates in Brazil, you can see there on the top left, reduced in the first half of the calendar year, which helped drive increased credit availability for vehicles. There have been a couple of recent interest rate increases, but we haven't today seen any real impact on vehicle trading as a result of those. Brazilian economy is strong with unemployment as low as 6%, consumer confidence remaining high. Brazilian auto markets also strong with 7.7 million new and used car transactions in the past half, which provides us with significant opportunity for growth going forward.
Slide 29, and just looking at their financial performance, and again delivered another outstanding result, which is a credit to the teams in LATAM. Revenue growth of 30% and EBITDA growth of 34% in constant currency, and that's largely reflecting the performance of Webmotors. National expansion strategy I mentioned earlier, and that's continued to deliver excellent growth through adding new dealers, growing our audience, and increasing private seller volumes. We've observed the continued development of our digital advertising market in Brazil, and yeah still much less mature than the Australian market, which positions us really well going forward. Average revenue per dealer is increasing, and that's through increased premium product penetration and price rises.
The new Wallet loyalty program that many of you are familiar with, that's gone exceptionally well over the last six months, and we've seen accelerated adoption there of premium products such as depth, our CRM inspections, and Vision 360 all being helped by Wallet. Also continue to see revenue diversification with finance volumes growing strongly, and as I mentioned earlier, and media is also a key growth driver for that business now too, so results also include the contribution of Webmotors' adjacent market subs being Car10 and Loop, and they've expanded rapidly over the last six months too. Chileautos also give them a good benchmark in, they've had an excellent half with strong growth in revenue and earnings too.
On to slide 30, and just looking at some observations in Korea, and the Korean used car transactions have grown over the past, what, three calendar years, while new car transactions have declined. Interest rates in Korea are at a low 3%, and they've remained there for quite a long period of time now, and been very stable, which is really a testament to such a strong and stable economy. Look over the last three years, I guess, yeah there's been a significant increase in the size of the export market in Korea too, which estimated to be worth about $5 billion, and I think that really presents us with some future opportunity for growth possibly as well.
Looking at the numbers on slide 31, and clearly supported by the macro backdrop, but Encar had an excellent start to the year with revenue and EBITDA up 15% and 12% respectively on a constant currency basis. We added four new branches over the last six months and extended our operating hours in certain inspection centers for guarantee, and that's really supported another really nice uplift there, but also it supported us with the price rise that we've done recently too. So revenue growth supported by that 10% price rise we just mentioned, that was done from August and takes effect gradually over time. Encar continues to make really strong progress on its mission to facilitate the online car buying transactions, and that's reflected in the strong growth you can see on the slide there talking about Encar Home digital retailing services, and some really.
Dealer Direct also is another one to talk to. We're seeing continued improvement there. The team is investing more in their product in H2 too, and that's also going to include an uplift in some marketing as we ramp up in that space. On to slide 32, and just talking about short-term shareholder value, and this really summarizes the group's performance here. Look, we've delivered another excellent half in growth with revenue and earnings, both up double-digit. We've got multiple growth levers across the group, which gives us confidence in our ability to keep growing as a business well into the future. We've made significant progress around some of our strategic things that we're focused on, C2C payments, talked about like that, got great opportunities for us in the future, made great progress in rolling out our global media strategy, which we talked to.
Our Trader business has really delivered a resilient performance and is really in a great position to grow further once the market conditions in the U.S. get a little bit better. Webmotors, they're knocking out of the park. Market leadership there's been fantastic, and there's great opportunities ahead for us in that business too. Korea also had a great start to the year and potential to grow further in Guarantee, Dealer Direct, and Encar Home. Finally, yeah, we continue to build on our market leadership positions, yeah, building competitive advantage. We remain really focused on removing those friction points in buying and selling, which is creating new monetization opportunities for us, some of which we've talked about, and we know we've got great opportunity in our international markets, the products that we're bringing to market there.
Also focused on growing customer acquisition and take rates here over time. We're really happy with the rate of IP and tech that we're leveraging across all these competencies and the different markets that we're in with more to come. And finally, yeah you heard from Will, we're a great generator of cash and with a very strong balance sheet, and you'll see us continue to make that a feature of the business, but we're also investing in future growth and paying attractive dividends to shareholders at the same time. So with that, look I'll hand over to any questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two, and if you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question.
Your first question comes from Eric Choi from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Good morning team. I was wondering if I could do three, maybe one for Cam, one for David, one for Eduardo. Just for Cam first, just on price increases, as a general statement, I think you guys try and maintain dealer goodwill rather than pushing the envelope on price increases. So if I look at Australia, you guys do 4%-5%, and the dealer feedback is you guys probably could do a lot more. So I'm just wondering if the same logic is applying here in the U.S., like are you guys just trying to support the dealers while the macro is a bit soft and it's not necessarily that you can't push up prices?
And if that's the case, then there isn't really any reason why the 6%-7% price increases you guys used to do for TI can't continue. That's the first, please.
Thanks Eric for the question, and yeah your logic is sound. So we run the business as you know, mate, for the long term, not the short term, and dealers are our core customers. So when it comes to price, we do think about market conditions, we do think about the value that we're adding to the dealer network, and we try to strike a balance. And so the market clearly in the U.S. has been challenging in terms of where they are. They're out of season at the moment as well, they're coming into season, and so it's been about making sure that we're acting responsibly and not pushing too hard unnecessarily.
So yeah, that's definitely a part of our thinking when it comes to price, whether it's in the U.S., Australia, or anywhere. So that's probably the response to the first question. Have you got another one?
And I'm guessing you deliberately didn't want to comment on quantum, Cam. I'm just going because the take rate in TI still remains low, so is there any reason why the quantum should decelerate?
No, there's no reason.
Gotcha. Maybe one for David or Will. I guess just looking at guidance for the U.S., it feels like it was a pretty line ball call between sticking with good or moving to solid. I reckon maybe one or two percentage points of difference. So if FY25 almost made it to good with uncooperative macro, is it fair that good U.S. growth from FY26 is a possibility?
Dave, you should do that, mate.
Yeah, look, good question Eric. It really was a line ball decision. I think Cam articulated very well in terms of the rate increase and the deferral of the timing. In terms of how we think about the world, clearly we think about growing our business, double digit in revenue and double digit in profit every single year, and we set a plan up accordingly, if you like, and if I think about the things that are running through the business at the moment, we just launched a brand new RV retail platform, which is really positive and pretty much across all metrics has driven positive results, so that's going to be really good for our consumers as well as our dealers. We just attached AI to our Premium Select, so we can now optimize our Premium Select, if you like, and AutoPick.
So that's great for dealers and really helps them get more leads, which is what the game is all about. We launched a business known as Zonara, which is our regional agency business, which is a real opportunity for us to utilize our audience, which is clearly our strength, and then find people off portal, whether it's for other agencies, whether it's for OEMs, or whether it's for our dealer community. So that's really exciting and bodes really well for the future. We're seeing strong growth in partnerships, particularly surrounding F&I, so more to come there. As you've already as well documented, I mean, with Marine, so we've seen really positive growth with SEO as that improves in SEM. So traffic is positive, leads are strong, and what we're doing right now is converting dealers across to our cost per lead model.
So we should start to see that make a contribution in 2026 and then materially in 2027. So all in all, look, I feel good about whether the plan for the half and really FY 2026 and those goals for the future.
Nice one, thanks David. But I've put in the last one for Eduardo. Just on LATAM revenue growth, it looks like it's accelerated to 30% from the mid-20s, and I assume Webmotors must have driven the bulk of this even despite the rate hikes. And I'm just, if you take a step back, obviously when you guys lifted the stake to 70%, you guys were looking to implement more things like media, finance, and Wallet. So I'm just wondering, does that acceleration reflect those initiatives now?
And if that's the case, is this accelerated revenue growth more of the baseline rather than what we kind of saw from Webmotors through history?
Oh, thanks Eric for the question. Yeah, you were right. I think we have three very important pillars that supported our growth. One, it's collaboration with CAR Group overall. It's running very well. We are exchanging a lot of things. It's media, financing, products for dealers, experience for the private sellers. So across the board, we have a full collaboration across the countries and with CAR Group. So I think they know very well how to add value for a business and how to make this exchange, this knowledge exchange. So it's one of the key parts of our growth. The other one, of course, is the partnership with Santander. I'm going to say again about CAR Group because it's not just Webmotors.
CAR Group and Santander are working very well together. The collaboration is in a very high level. So it's another thing. And the third one is it was the execution of the team that it was a very good half in terms of execution. Looking ahead about the growth, what I can say is that the momentum for sure is excellent, and we will have another strong second half. I don't have doubts about this. But of course, continue to grow at 25% plus becomes harder as the base grows, particularly in our small high-growth business as Car10 and Loop. But I'm very confident in our ability and ability of the team to keep growing strongly.
Thanks, Eduardo.
My pleasure.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Kane Hannan from Goldman. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Maybe talk a little bit more about some of the dealer trends you're seeing across the TI verticals. I think you said it was basically flat at a group level in the last six months, but it looks like things are taking a bit of a turn for the worse post-CAGM, where you reiterated guidance. Just talk a little bit more about what you're seeing across the verticals.
Dave, do you want to?
Yeah, sorry, Kane. Yeah, sorry. I presume it's me, Kane. So just in terms of customer numbers, look, we've said they've held up in what has been a tough market, Kane, so very pleased with that. And really, those numbers do include Camping World. So what we have seen is we've seen some deterioration at the lower level of customers across the board and as well as some of our non-core sites.
So pleased to be holding the number. And with an improvement in the macro environment, the market over here, hopefully we'll start to see that start growing again in the next six months to the next 18 months.
So sort of headline numbers in the 2Q, did we have any noticeable difference to what came through in the first quarter?
Any noticeable difference in what, mate? Sorry.
Oh, in dealer numbers. Just obviously reiterated the guidance of the AGM, deferring the price rise because of some macro uncertainty. Just trying to work out if things took a turn for the worse at all, 2Q relative to the first quarter.
No, look, I think dealers are steady.
As Cam sort of pointed out earlier, the reason why we moved the price rise was because of all those things that we talked about that we consider in terms of the market, dealers' performance, the value we drive to dealers. We just thought it was prudent to sort of line up our decision around price with the recreation industry and when it comes on season.
Yep, that's helpful. Maybe on Encar, just when I think about the revenue outlook into the second half, I think the timing of the guaranteed price rises means it's going to be obviously more significant in the second half. Is there anything I should think about that slows that rate of revenue growth, second half, first half?
Yes, Dave. Yes, I think given that we raised the price rise for the guarantee July and August in CY24, I think the effect in the second half will be pretty much similar to the first half. Other than that, I mean, what would be the potential for the second half revenue growth would be pretty much similar that have been leading the revenue growth in first half. We highly rely on the guarantee volume as well as price, as well as home services and dealer direct partially as well. And so the premium, we would like to look at that as well.
Yep, that's helpful. And then lastly, just payments in Australia. It looks on those charts that it did sort of 15 million transactions in January, obviously growing very strongly. I mean, what does that need to get to?
What do you think that could get to across the course of this year before you want to, I suppose, really monetize it more explicitly, sort of launch into some of the other things you've spoken about, Cam?
Yeah, Kane, thanks for that. I mean, the early feedback that we've had from the product has been excellent. That's from the beta items that we've got. From an MPS perspective, we've seen sellers that sell using the C2C products have been double that haven't used the C2C. So that's been encouraging from a user experience perspective. Our goal with C2C is to remove a friction point in the C2C process.
So we see the opportunity from a monetization perspective in building the value, continuing to build the value and removing the friction points in that process, which over time will enable us to be able to increase the yield in private sale. We don't have a timeline on when we look to do that. We're seeing the rate of C2C take-up improving virtually every day, certainly month on month. We've got a lot of initiatives to come with that. So we'll continue to monitor that. And when it gets to a point from a trust and confidence perspective and from a value perspective, we're able to increase the yield through our dynamic pricing tool.
Awesome. Thanks very much, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Entcho Raykovski from E&P. Please go ahead.
Morning, Cam and team. I'm going to keep the trend, and my first question is on TI.
I'm wondering if you can provide us with the building blocks to second half 2025 revenue growth. Obviously, price increase will only have a couple of months' impact. Call it 2%, maybe 3%, depending on when you might increase. Are you able to give us then a broad guide on the other contributors? And in particular, how should we think about the contribution from media, private depth? The relative contribution from those would be very helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, mate. Yeah, look. The growth outlook. Question is growth in second half. I mean, outside of price, which clearly that's deferred, but will happen in Q4. There's money coming out of dealer depth. Premium Select, that product continues to perform well year on year, which is pleasing.
As I said earlier, we've just attached the AI piece to that from a product standpoint. So that really should help our sales guys as well as drive more value to dealers. We're seeing really good growth coming out of our media business. So good money out of OEMs laying down for the year with us this year. People like Honda, Indian, and Suzuki, Yamaha. Really good conversations going on in there, as well as non-OEMs. So good growth coming out of that. The Zonara business, that's literally just started, and that's growing quite rapidly. So we expect media to really give us a strong H2 as well. And then some odds and sods coming out of our data business, essentially. So that's where we'll see the growth. So we'll see it in rate, as per usual.
We'll see it in dealer depth, which is Premium Select, and we'll see it come out of media.
Okay, great. Thanks, David. Is that the sort of order quantum we should be thinking about in terms of depth, media, other?
Well, I mean, when you say quantum, I didn't give you quantum. I just told you where it was going to come from. So there are other things, mate, that are going to drive. So partnerships are going to drive revenue. We're going to see a little bit from Marine. We're going to see a little bit from our data business. But look, it's nice that it's coming out from a more of a diversified product hierarchy, if you like, and not just completely relying on marketplace. So yeah, but that's how you should think about this half. And I think that really sets us up well for next year.
Okay, great. Thanks, David, and then I've got a question on the domestic operations, particularly in private. So revenue growth was 6%. I mean, it was consistent with guidance. But that looks to mainly be price-driven, given you put an increase of about that quantum in June. I mean, is that the case with, if you can confirm, and has the one sale initiative, which I think you put in place just over six months ago, is that driving better instant offer volumes, or is instant offer fairly flattish? Thank you.
Yeah, Entcho, you're right. Volumes have been a little soft from a private perspective, slightly down on PCP. Yield's been the main driver of the growth here. So we've been able to flex between different categories of cars and location, etc. IO continues to be an important piece in our private offering.
And we're certainly seeing the one sale initiative directing people towards Instant Offer and balancing the needs or their needs in that private sale process. So that's still performing quite well.
Okay, great. Thank you. And final one on Korea. Just looking at your guidance for Encar EBITDA growth after you delivered 12% in the first half, do you expect some slowdown in second half earnings? I'm just interested in whether there's some conservatism built in or whether the marketing spend will materially pick up into H2, which is why you're still guiding for solid, whereas it seems like you're tracking ahead of that in the first half. Thank you.
Yes, Entcho, you're exactly right. I mean, we don't expect much of a change in revenue.
In the second half, we expected to spend ourselves with the investment, particularly around the marketing, given the competitors' marketing spending gets aggressive.
Okay. And are you able to give us a rough sense of the quantum of that marketing spend, or is it just something that's captured in the guidance?
It has already captured in the guidance. I mean, exact amount of spending on the marketing will be flexible depending on our financial performance and conditions. So marketing spending is all about the lever that we can flexibly maneuver and control to protect our expected profitability and profit.
Okay, that's great.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Shreyas Singh from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, three questions from my side. One on the U.S. Could you talk a little bit about the trends you're seeing in the commercial truck segment?
We understand the cyclical pressures in the discretionary verticals, but in the truck segment, you've seen strong growth in website visits. Are you finding more success in adding truck dealerships as customers and also some success in upselling packages? On Brazil, second question, looks like your national expansion strategy is working pretty well with strong growth in leads coming from the regional areas. Can you talk or can you update us a little bit about the competitive landscape in the regional areas? And any thoughts around whether your horizontal competition, OLX and Mercado Libre, are they a little bit distracted with competition from Temu and therefore better runway for you in regional areas to add more dealerships? And lastly, on Korea, you've done these price increases in Korea after a long time. You called out in your presentation that there has been no volume impact.
So should we see more of these price increases because your take rates are lower? Thank you.
Want me to go first, Cam?
Yes, please, mate.
Hello. Everyone still there?
Yep, we're still here, mate. Go ahead.
Okay. Sorry, just some distortion on this end. Yeah, look, yeah, good question. Truck really has been the shining light as it relates to marketplace over the last 6-12 months. That provided us with really good growth in the half. Customer numbers have been really solid with truck. We have been adding small amounts of customers. But we've done really well from a Premium Select in that environment. From a traffic perspective, when you look at our internal metrics, our visits are really, really strong and have started this year strong. Interestingly, since post-election, they've been performing really, really well.
So I'd say high-level visits and audience are in a really strong place. And what we need to see now is we want to see more of that conversion. But yeah, but Trader's in a good position. I think that over the next six to 12 months, it should continue to provide good growth for our business. You're doing Brazil?
Okay. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yes, the regional expansion is working very well. As soon as we start to do in one city, we have the knowledge. Of course, Brazil, you have completely different regions. The northeast is completely different from the southeast and from São Paulo, for example, and different strategies.
But as soon as we evolve the strategy, we are getting better and better in terms of what to do in some cities and the learnings of the process that we had in the previous city, which, as you saw, the results that we are having with leads and not just leads, but in terms of also in terms of audience. So it's running very well. And I think that has space to keep growing because it's a huge market. And I see, to be honest, I see opportunities everywhere in all the regions. And talking about the landscape and competitors, we have a very unique competition here in Brazil because you have all the banks with marketplaces. You have the horizontals. But talking about the horizontals, it's about your question. What I'm seeing right now, that no relevant investment reaction in these cities that we are working.
And of course, we have other segments inside these platforms, and maybe the focus is more connected with the other segments and not with cars and vehicles. So what I can say up to now, so far, is that no significant investments are coming from the horizontal players. And to be honest, I think that we have a very unique model in terms of ecosystem with Santander, with Car10, with Loop. It's not so easy to copy, but we are very, very aware of the power of our competitors, and we are all the time monitoring all the activities. But so far, no relevant reaction. Do you want to talk about for us?
Yes. For the volume impact from price-wise, in general, including guarantee, what we did was usually the volume was impacted, but it will be and has been recovered within two to six months gradually, including the guarantee this time as well. Regarding your question that, I mean, will we continue to look at an opportunity to increase the price more often and more size? We were looking at that. But in the competitive dynamics here in Korea is getting more intensified because of Hyundai or because of other players getting to the B2C market. And most of them are advertisement prices free of charge, while Encar charges a lot. So I mean, we'll be extremely careful about price-wise. But historically, we have been very successful in doing that while we're protecting the volume as well.
Thank you.
We've got time for one more question. Thank you.
Your last question comes from Siraj Ahmed from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thanks, everyone. Maybe I'll just kick off with Webmotors if that's okay for a change. Just, Eduardo, just can I just confirm that the rate hikes had no impact on finance conversion? And secondly, on that as well, just on Wallet, which has driven strong yield growth, did that have a full impact in first half, or should we be thinking that Wallet impact accelerates into this year? Thanks.
Sorry, if I understand, you asked about Wallet, and the beginning of the question, sorry, I lost. Could you repeat?
Just on the rate hike, Eduardo, have you seen any impact on the finance conversions or finance?
Okay, okay. Perfect. Perfect. So in terms of interest rate, we are not seeing so far any impact. Of course, it's going to arrive in some moments ahead.
But the good news here, in my opinion, is that the central bank is showing to the market that they are independent and keeps the strategy to keep the inflation under control and to have all the benefits that we are having because it's very recently in Brazil that the central bank is independent. So that's the good side because the economy is in a very strong pace and the central bank is acting. So I expect it to have some impact, of course. But in Brazil, we are so used to have this volatility in the interest rate, to be honest. And in the past, we had this. We didn't have a huge impact in terms of finance. But even when we have this, we compensate with other lines. So what I can say right now is to keep observing how it's going to affect the market.
As I said before, so far, nothing. And here in Brazil, you need to take into account that the most important is the installment that the consumer pays. The interest rate, of course, it's something that is behind this. But up to now, the interest rate increases. The three points is going to increase one point more. It's going to achieve 14.25. But when you see this in terms of installments and when we talk about the economy growing and all this, so sometimes compensated and the consumer keeps getting credit and all this. So let's see. In summary, I expect some impact, but not a huge impact. And in terms of wallet, it's working very well. It's one of the highlights that I would like to share about this half because the combination with Santander, it's working very well. We are having benefits also for Santander.
Just to remember that Santander, when you have a dealer with the loyalty program with them and a huge market share, they deposit money inside the wallet, and they can buy products from Webmotors. So we have almost right now more than 50,000 transactions and more than 7,000 dealers using the product. So a huge contribution, and I think it was a win-win product that we launched together with Santander.
Great. Thanks. Can I just ask a quick question on TI as well? Just on, maybe I'm reading too much into the line ball comment from Will. But if that's the case, if it's going to be similar growth rates for the first half and the second half, then what's offsetting that delayed price increase? David, is there something else?
I mean, I know you mentioned media and the things, but what's stepping up to fill that gap in the second half? Or should we be thinking there's a slowdown given the price rise of the delayed? Thanks.
Yeah, and I think I sort of covered them off before, but really, the OEM business and the media business is accelerating. So that's positive for us. Our data business is going really, really well, as well as our partnerships. So that would be the items. And then the final thing really is the launch of Zonara, which is the regional agency business.
All right. Thanks.
I think that's all of our time for now. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call today. We're a little bit over the hour, but I look forward to catching up with most of you, of course, in the next few days. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now just disconnect.