Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the Carsales FY23 half year results conference call. Just before we start, I'd just like to take a moment to just acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which we're on here in Melbourne. We're on the land of the Wurundjeri people and just wanna pay our respect to their elders past, present, and emerging. On the call this morning with me, we've got Will Elliott. Will's our CFO. Kane Hocking, who's Head of Investor Relations. Paul Barlow, who's the MD of our Australian business. SB Kim is here in Melbourne from NCAR in Korea, and Laurie Stacey is on the call from Virginia Beach in the United States.
Like we normally do, we'll run through the slides in hopefully about 30 minutes and leave about 30 minutes for any questions that people have. I'll call out the slide numbers as I step through it as well. Maybe start with slide five. Look, as you can see here from the metrics on this page, we've had an exceptional first half performance, which is really a reflection of our market leading positions and brands in really attractive markets, along with our continued discipline in the execution of our strategy. The pro forma results are really the best reflection of the underlying performance of the company, and they include the 100% of Trader Interactive, and that's in both the current and the comparative period.
Really pleased to see 15% growth in revenue and 17% growth in EBITDA on that basis. The double digit here also reflects double-digit growth across our Australian business, Korean business, US, and Brazilian operations, revenue levels. Just other things to call out probably on the slide. Yeah, very happy with the pro forma EBITDA margin expanding to 54.4%. Our Australian private revenue growing by 39% on PCP. We've had strong customer acquisition in the United States. We've reached a record 10,000 trade customers there. We've seen outstanding Guarantee growth in Korea, achieving more than 40% of inventory penetration now with Guarantee product.
We've seen exceptional outcomes come from our regional expansion in Brazil, all of which we'll cover off in the slides to come. If we move to the next slide six. Along with our strong financial results, we're really, really happy to see the continuation of excellent operational performance metrics apart from inventory, which, you know, is getting back to pre-pandemic levels. We've seen vehicle marketplaces continue to trade well across the world. We're seeing steady improvement in global inventory levels as supply chains constraints sort of start to ease, that's positively impacting revenue overall. In Australia, used car prices have remained elevated, we're up around 40% on pre-pandemic levels, and we'll go into that in a little bit more detail further on into the deck.
Audience-wise, activity and engagement on our non-automotive vertical sites in the United States are also materially above pre-COVID levels, meaning we're providing a strong return on investment for our dealers and private sellers there. Onto slide seven. As a business, we, you know, we've invested in markets with significant long-term growth potential where we can leverage our IP and technology to create sustainable long-term value for shareholders. These markets we operate also have significant TAMs. On the right-hand side, you can see that, you know, while we've doubled our share of TAM over the past seven years, we still only hold around 12% share overall. You know, as a business, we're really well-placed going forward to continue capturing additional value over time, given the strength and capability of our marketplace businesses that we have.
Onto slide eight. Just building on the previous slide, you can see here by market, against our nearest vertical competitors in traffic and inventory that, you know, that we're really well-placed as market leaders with network effects we have to continue really delivering the strongest possible value proposition for our consumers and for our dealers. That, that strength in our market position's been supported by our ability to deliver yield increases across all of our businesses, and that's reflected in the strong revenue growth and margin expansion that you'll see and have seen already, in the over the last six months. Onto slide nine. We've...
Look, we've published this a few times, but important just to refresh on our strategy, and that is to drive growth through innovation, product yield, optimization, corporate development. That growth is within the domains of our digital marketplaces, value-added services, and what we call our future horizons. You know, by leveraging our people, our data, and our technology. We try and do this and deliver all this all with the purpose of trying to make buying and selling a great experience. Slide 10. You know, with our strategic framework in mind, over the last six months, we've been largely focused on these five strategic priority areas, and we've made excellent progress on each of them, which we'll step through more in the presentation. Onto Slide 11.
Really pleased with the execution of our Trader Interactive synergies over the past six months. We've talked a little bit about Lead Amplifier product. We launched that several months back. This product provides the dealer with the ability to control the inventory presented to the consumer in a post lead email that's sent by Trader Interactive. The product's performing exceptionally well, and that's reflected by a low opt-out rate that we've seen. We've also announced a price rise to the dealer network, and that will be effective from March, April this year across all of our major verticals. The yield impact we anticipate there will be a 7% uplift. Also really pleased that we've launched our phase I of our dynamic pricing in private seller in RVs.
We've done that over the last couple of weeks, and we're seeing an excellent uplift in yield there similar to what we saw when we first deployed it into Australia in FY17. We're also getting ready to launch Top Spot ad products. We'll do that in Q4, and that'll work similar to how it works here in Australia. Very pleased with how all that activity in TI is going. Now onto slide 12. This slide really captures the revenue and EBITDA performance of all of our businesses we now own on a pro forma basis since 2007. I guess the message here is that the company's consistently delivered growth through economic cycles.
Onto slide 13, again, very pleased to reiterate the guidance we provided at the October AGM, which is supported by the excellent results that we've achieved in this first six months. The guidance is that on a pro forma basis, a pro forma constant currency basis, that we expect to deliver good growth in revenue and EBITDA in FY23. It's also been really pleasing to see the excellent momentum that we have with Trader Interactive and that business since we took full control in October last year. I'd go so far as to say things are going better than we expected. Laurie and her executive team are doing an outstanding job. We're seeing the benefits of a number of the synergies that we've identified being delivered now.
Positive momentum continues there through January and February and with growth expanding versus H1. Now I'll hand over to Will, and Will can run us through all the financials.
Thanks very much, Cam, and good morning, everyone. Look, as Cam has mentioned, carsales has delivered an excellent financial performance over the last six months, and the results here on slide 15 reflect the strong track record of growth that the business has delivered over a number of years. Look, it's really pleasing to see that the growth rates in these financial metrics are increasing more recently. This reflects the long-term investments that we've made in our people, product, and technology. Now moving on to slide 16, which shows a summary of our P&L. The strong growth in adjusted revenue and EBITDA you see here reflects the impact of consolidating Trader Interactive for the first time in October 2022.
From a presentation perspective, we've included a pro forma view on the right-hand side, which normalizes for the impact of the Trader acquisition, to best show the underlying performance of the business. On this basis, we delivered revenue and EBITDA growth of 15% and 17% respectively, which is a really impressive result. Just moving down to P&L, the increased finance cost reflects the additional debt taken on to fund the TI acquisition, and the increases we have seen in base interest rates over the last year. The group delivered adjusted net profit of AUD 122 million, which was 37% higher year-on-year, which reflects the strong underlying growth of the business, and also the incremental ownership of Trader Interactive.
The board has declared an interim dividend of AUD 28.5 Per share, which is up 12% on last year. The adjusted results differ from the reported statutory results, which you can see in the table in the bottom left, largely reflecting the exclusion of some one-off items which relate to the Trader Interactive transaction. A more detailed breakdown is provided in the appendix. Onto slide 17, which shows a summary of our financial performance by segment. I won't go into any detail on this slide as Cam's gonna walk through this a little later in the presentation, but it is fantastic to see double-digit revenue growth across all of our regions, reflecting the strength of the operational performance over the last six months. Onto slide 18.
Look, the group's delivered an excellent margin performance, with EBITDA margins expanding over the last six months. This highlights the strength of our market positions, the operating leverage we have in our business model, our ability to deliver yield increases, and also strong discipline in managing costs in what's been a more challenging inflationary environment. Really pleasing to see the good margin expansion we've had in Australia and the US. In Asia, we've got a strong EBITDA margin of 50%. There was good growth in underlying margins in Asia, which was partly offset by an uplift in brand marketing, to support the continued growth of the Dealer Direct product into the future.
There was a small drag on margins from carsales investments, which was largely through incremental investment in place of our mobility app and higher freight costs in our tire business. Just one call-out that we expect cost growth overall to moderate in the second half. Moving on to slide 19. We generated strong operating cash flows again in the first half of FY23 with an EBITDA to cash flow conversion ratio of 97%. That highlights both our strong working capital profile and also our discipline in cash flow management. From a funding perspective, as you can see, we've delivered pro forma leverage of 2.5x , which is a little bit better than what we said our leverage was going to be post the Trader Interactive transaction.
We plan to de-lever to under 2x within the next 18 months. From a CapEx perspective, look, the business continues to invest in key products and technologies to support our ongoing growth. As you can see, we've made great progress over the last six months in terms of product development. Given there was a step up in CapEx in H2 last year, we expect the growth in CapEx on PCP to moderate in the second half of this year. Look, now I'll hand back to Cam to talk further about operational performance and strategic priorities.
Thanks, Will. Look, just before we launch into the Australian business segment performance, I thought it'd be appropriate to make a few comments on how we're observing the Australian car market at the moment. Look, on the supply side of the market, we've seen inventory gradually returning to pre-pandemic levels. I guess that growth is being driven by improving new car supply, more trade-ins and people wanting to really leverage the strong used car prices that are being achieved at the moment. On the demand side, we've seen consumer car buying intent holding up over the last six months, we observe that through site traffic and lead volumes.
What that's meant overall as an outcome is to date, we haven't observed any noticeable decline in used car pricing across either private seller or dealer with pricing holding up at around 40% above pre-pandemic levels. That pricing plateaued probably towards around September last year. We've noticed it's continued to hold to these levels today. Onto slide 22. We've talked about market conditions, how that sort of translate into performance for our dealer and private businesses. Starting with dealer on the left and growth of 10% for the half was a good outcome overall. Demand for new and used cars has remained robust, as already mentioned, and dealer margins have remained elevated versus pre-pandemic levels.
The revenue growth of 10% came from yield uplifts, increased penetration of premium product and volume growth, and pleased to see Depth penetration in Q2 increase as well as inventory levels have steadily grown. Onto the right-hand side. Yeah, we've continued to deliver really outstanding outcomes for private sellers, and that's reflected in the 39% revenue growth that you see here. Key drivers of the growth have been a buoyant private seller ad market, execution of dynamic pricing strategies we have, and increasing Instant Offer volumes as we try and build consumer awareness there too. Onto slide 23. Just looking at the left-hand side of the slide there, media performance.
You know, it was great from our perspective to see another half of double-digit revenue growth for the 4.5 In a row in the media space. It's a testament to the execution of the strategy that we have, which is to diversify into non-automotive customers and to deliver innovative, native, and programmatic products. We'll provide a little bit more detail on that further into the deck. On the right-hand side, data research and services revenue up slightly by 2% on PCP, which we felt was a resilient effort. And that growth largely coming from our RedBook data business. Onto slide 24. carsales investments, and these include businesses we consider to be standalone from our core marketplace businesses and includes adjacent services.
Our biggest contributor here to this segment is our tire business, and we saw that grow on an underlying basis by 8% on PCP, which was a solid outcome in a more challenging market. Our RedBook Inspect business demonstrated good growth in underlying inspection volumes, particularly in our pre-purchase and rideshare segments, and Placee, which is a longer play, has made good progress too. Onto slide 25, just following on from some of the comments made on the Australian market and reflecting on our major international markets now. We're talking about international and inventory supply dynamics.
Look, from a traffic perspective, we've delivered with or we are delivering materially more traffic across each of our key international markets versus our pre-pandemic levels, which is a testament to the market positions that we have and the strong consumer focus. As mentioned at the AGM in October, Trader Interactive's business has been. That has good countercyclical market characteristics. While we've seen metrics like traffic and lead volumes come off pre-pandemic FY21 highs, they still remain well above pre-pandemic FY21 levels. Other things that we have observed here is our inventory levels, as mentioned before, are all rising in all of our international markets here with the exception of Korea.
as in the case of TI, as inventory has grown, they become clearly a more important partner for dealers and pleasing to see, in customer levels surpass 10,000 for the first time. In relation to South Korea, activity on the site there continues to be strong, albeit our lead volumes have been marginally impacted by a drop in purchasing intent, due partly to local credit tightening, which we anticipate is gonna ease in H2. This has resulted in higher inventory levels on site, and time to sell has increased there as well. Brazil, strong acquisition of new customers in regional expansion of the business has supported rising inventory levels there.
Despite higher interest rates and inflation, we continue to observe a strengthening new car market, sales are up there 14% on PCP in the last six months. Onto slide 26. Looking at Trader Interactive, they've had another excellent six months with revenue and earnings up 11% and 15% on PCP, respectively, on a constant currency basis. EBITDA margins expanding through operating leverage from around 57%- 59%. All our verticals grew, but RV and powersports were the standouts through growth in yield, customer penetration, and rising inventory levels. The truck segment is also starting to improve as inventory levels recover from those pandemic lows. Really pleased also with how the Trader Interactive business is going.
They've got good performance momentum heading into the second half with the Lead Amplifier product and products like dynamic pricing, Top Spot coming online, and dealer yield uplifts of around 7%, which I mentioned before. Lot there for us to look forward to in H2. On to slide 27. Another excellent financial performance from Encar with revenue and earnings up 12% and 13% on PCP on a constant currency basis, being underpinned by continued strong growth across their three key products being Guarantee, Dealer Direct, and myCar Home. Guarantee continues to be a key growth driver in the business with an additional three sites and growing customer penetration there within the branches that we have.
42% of Encar's site is now covered by Guarantee inspected cars and the opportunity to continue that continues over time. Other solid revenue growth was achieved largely through traditional advertising product. On to slide 28. Just looking at Webmotors, it's again had another outstanding six months with revenue growth of 23% and EBITDA growth of 8% on PCP on a constant currency basis. Eduardo, who market hasn't met yet, has an excellent executive team, and we have a fantastic first-class business in Webmotors.
Dealer revenue there has been underpinned by new customer subscriptions across the country and yield growth that we've seen over the last six months as well, and an improvement in chargeable leads and the sale of premium dealer products, such as our Cockpit CRM product that we have. Our regional expansion campaign, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, is seeing exceptional results with our market share versus competitors in key tier two cities increasing significantly through organic investment in brand and traffic. The investment we're making in marketing here is temporary as we capture more market share and see significant and revenue margin upside here over the longer term.
In relation to inventory, like we're seeing in Australia and other parts of the world, inventory levels are recovering and getting closer to pre-pandemic levels as well, and you saw that earlier in the slide deck. Onto slide 29, and talking about the rest of LatAm, and we've seen much improved performances in Chile and Mexican operations as inventory levels have increased materially from pre-pandemic lows. As a result, Chile's delivered outstanding revenue growth in dealer and private segments. Also pleasing to see us leverage the dynamic pricing product that we have from Australia into Chile with significant uplift there in yield, providing us with additional confidence regarding the implementation of dynamic pricing in other markets, including the US, which we'll again discuss a little bit further.
Mexico, whilst number of our metrics are improving there, market still remains a bit challenging with new cars still below pre-pandemic levels. The focus there remains on really trying to minimize cost while market conditions continue to improve over time. Just on to strategy and some of our priorities in Australia, and we'll go through this by geography. Just wanna remind you all of our key priorities in Australia and the progress we've made across these areas over the last sort of six-12 months and where we'll be focusing our efforts. Along with our outstanding financial performance in Australia, over the last six months, we've achieved a number of key milestones as outlined on this slide.
A few to call out would be the integration of our new digital financing capability, executing an excellent brand awareness campaign for Instant Offer and launching innovative media product. Plenty of growth to come over the next 12 months from our key focus areas, including improved trade-in capability, adding more Instant Offer dealers and executing on more sophisticated dynamic pricing options over time. On to slide 32, our competitive position in Australia has strengthened across the board over the last six months, but it's been particularly evident in the private seller space.
Over the coming months, our focus is gonna be to continue to look for ways to add more value for private sellers. We anticipate that will be rewarded through increased market share and in ad volume and further yield uplift. What we intend to look at with dynamic pricing are options that would be based on things like, you know, postcode, time of year, time to sell and so on as well. Onto slide 33 and just looking at media. We modified our media strategy a couple of years ago, as you probably remember, and that was to diversify more heavily into non-automotive customer segments and introduce more innovative programmatic and native product solutions.
That evolution of our car site is reflected here in the carsales Match and Ignition products that we have. They are an extension of that strategy and are a reflection of a more sophisticated product offering that we now have, and that enables our advertising partners on the left-hand side with the carsales Match. To specifically target audiences as well as to purchase media products on a more convenient way, which you'll see on the right-hand side with our carsales Ignition. Both those products have got significant future potential in terms of revenue and scale, and we see them as products that we could potentially offer into our international marketplaces as well.
On to slide 34, we continue to focus on the long-term opportunity to digitize the car buying and selling process. As you can see here, we're making solid progress in reducing the friction points in each of the steps of the buying and sell process on that digital journey. There's still a long way for us to go, but the benefits of this strategy are being reflected in the accelerated growth we're seeing, which is giving us the confidence to keep investing in this area. Onto Trader Interactive in slide 35.
Look, as we've already mentioned, we're making excellent progress in executing on our strategic priorities in the U.S., and our confidence in our investment thesis is stronger than ever, which includes the progress that we're making on executing the synergies identified as part of our move to a 100% ownership. Just a couple of things to call out on this slide. From a market leadership perspective, we've strengthened our market leadership position in our recreational RV and powersports verticals. With trucks, we're continuing to bridge the gap with the major competitor there being TruckPaper.com. That's being reflected in the strong customer acquisition and yield uplifts that we're seeing. Also mentioned the launch of dynamic pricing here.
We're also working on our approach to media and the opportunity that we have, and we've already captured many of the cost synergies that we mentioned late last year. Overall, we're in a great place with our initiative execution in that business. Turning to slide 36 now and Encar priorities. FB Kim and his executive team continue to execute well. These are the all familiar strategic priorities, and they'll continue to be all leading to an end-to-end digital retailing experience over time, which is what we're all chasing and working towards as an organization. Now onto slide 37, Webmotors priorities. The Webmotors business is an outstanding business.
Brazil is one of the largest car markets in the world, and we are as a business in a great competitive position there. We have a great team of execs as well, and made great progress over the last six months in organic growth and in our regional expansion. Given the outstanding results in the regional expansion campaign, I mean, this will continue to be the focus over the next 12 months, and it provides us with a great opportunity to organically grow the Webmotors brand and deliver long-term growth potential that we see from that campaign.
Given the investment that we've been making in our immediate business and the evolution of that strategy here in Australia, we expect Webmotors to take advantage of that at some point in time for the Brazilian market. We'll also continue to optimize yield as the interest rate environment improves, there's significant potential to drive incremental penetration of our world-leading finance product that we have as well. That completes the formal presentation. Just quickly to summarize, we've had an excellent first half with double-digit revenue growth across all of our geographies, we're in a strong position to deliver on our outlook. Strategically, we're executing well. We have significant opportunity for ongoing growth ahead of us.
We're in a business in a position where we have strong counter-cyclical attributes. Trader Interactive is performing very well for us and their product and initiative execution is ahead of our expectations. Finally, just on balance sheet, yeah, our balance sheet's in good shape. Our leverage is also lower than where we thought it'd be and yeah, we're confident in our ability to continue to deleverage organically over time. I'll leave it there and open up to 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. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Entcho Raykovski with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Morning, Cam, Will, everyone else. Most of these questions around the guidance and where you're tracking in the first half. I see you've delivered constant currency growth when we look at pro forma EBITDA of 15% in the first half, that seems to be tracking ahead of your full year guidance for good growth. Just interested whether, if you're being conservative or are there any areas that you expect will potentially slow down into the second half?
Sure.
Morning, Entcho. I mean, we've retained our guidance around pro forma, which is obviously for good growth. I think the trajectory of the business is excellent into the second half. The only comment around, you know, comparatives is obviously the private revenue in Australia did step up in the second half of last year. From a comparative perspective, there's a tougher comparative there. That's probably the only call-out in terms of half-on-half comps. You know, heading into the second half, as you can see, a lot of the commentary we've made is that, you know, consumer's in good shape in Australia and, you know, we've called out some positive trajectory into the U.S. as well. I think the second half's looking good at this stage.
Okay. Maybe if I can just pick up on those comments around the positive trajectory, it seems like, well obviously one of the contributors is the Lead Amplifier product. Are you able to tell us what the contribution of that product was in the first half or if there was any, given it was introduced in October? Just within that answer, are you able to give us an idea of what was the take-up of the product post opt-out?
Yeah, look, I'm happy to Oh, I'm happy to take that one, Entcho. The call-out we made to FY23 on that product is that it would have low single-digit % contribution to revenue. I think that gives you a pretty good steer in terms of its overall contribution. Take-up of the product has been excellent, well north of 50%. We won't give out exact numbers, but it's been better than what we're anticipating. Obviously second half, that will have a bigger impact 'cause we'll get the full half worth of the benefit rather than just three months.
Okay, great. Final one from me. Just if I look at your dealer lead volumes, growth of 1% in the first half, can you give us an idea of how perhaps the growth rates tracked Q1 versus Q2, given that you were comping a lockdown in Q1? I mean, I'm assuming you saw some slowdown in Q2, but if you can comment whether that was significant and how you see the outlook for lead volumes into 2H.
Kevin?
Thanks, Entcho. As you said, the lockdowns in 2021 give us a softer comp from in the first quarter. In the second quarter, we didn't see the activity come off. Consumers were still looking for cars, still buoyant. There is a skew towards private, but the consumer hasn't fallen away. At the start of H2, this has still held up. I think we're still in pretty good shape.
Okay. Sorry, PB, just a very final one, very straightforward one. How have volumes in Instant Offer tracked versus that 3,000 monthly volume number you gave us at the end of FY22?
They've been tracking well. We're not gonna give a running update on the volumes. The business overall has performed really well. The advertising that we did through H1 has had a positive effect both on IO and our privates overall. Yeah, we're very happy where it's at right now.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Eric Choi with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Morning to you. I just have three as well. First one maybe for PB or Cam. Obviously, private's going to have a cracking year- this- year. That potentially sets us up for a tougher comp into next year. My question is just how much scope, PB, is there for you to pull on dealer levers such as dynamic pricing and maybe depth next year to offset any slower private growth?
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Eric. I think there's a lot of scope as you said. There is a skew to private now. As private slows, if it slows, we're not seeing any sign of that right now. The dealer inventory will grow, and we think that'll provide an upsell from a lead perspective. We're also expecting services like depth, main event, et cetera, to increase as that dealer in-inventory pool increases. Yeah, we think we're well positioned from a product skew perspective and our dealer team's ready to help the dealers when that inventory pool does grow.
PB, if you were to, I guess, do the second iteration of, dealer dynamic, would it be like private where it can be quite kind of constant and iterative, or would you have to kind of wait for your January or November price reset points to look at, changes to dealer Dynamic Pricing?
Yeah, I don't think it'll be as dynamic as what we see in private. Certainly, certainly I think over the half as we watch inventory, where it goes as we watch the consumer demand, I think that'll dictate what we do from a pricing perspective there in dealer.
Awesome. Just go to Laurie. Hey, Laurie, just looking at our scraping data, it shows new listings are flat to up for powersports and trucks, but maybe new listings down for RVs. It sort of implies that high single-digit price increase is a bit more material for RV dealers on a per unit sold basis versus the other verticals. I'm just wondering, does this have any implications for sort of how you push prices between the different verticals going forward?
Thanks, Eric. I think the first thing to remember is that our revenue is not really linked to inventory in a very direct way. To your point, I mean, if you think about the per unit sold, I mean, we reviewed our take rate in some prior presentations, and you'll remember it being quite low. While it may be a little bit higher than it would have been in the past, there is still a lot of room before we get to the take rates where carsales or other leaded marketplaces are based on the price point of those units still today. We, you know, definitely see that there's still room in RV, but we also are really optimistic and see significant opportunity to accelerate revenues, particularly in powersports and trucks.
I think you'll see those being bigger contributor over time just because of the headroom and the opportunity we still have available there.
Makes sense. Hey, Will, someone's gonna ask you about this press speculation on M&A. Just wondering, I mean, we all think you guys have a good international track record. It's probably just a matter of timing. I guess with gearing at 2.5x , do you think there's balance sheet capacity now, or do you kind of wait and de-gear a bit before you look at other M&A?
Oh, mate, in terms of gearing, I mean, we made some comments in the presentation just around that we de-levered to, you know, 2.5x , which was better than where we said we were gonna be after the transaction. And that our plan is to, you know, continue to de-lever organically to under 2x within 18 months, and we're on track to do that. I'll leave it there then.
Thanks very much, team.
The next question comes from Darren Wong with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for the opportunity. Just two from me, please. Just on the Trader Interactive business, obviously a good outcome with the price increase, particularly in a softer environment. I just wanted to unpack that dealer volume contribution piece as to how much is inventory levels versus dealer penetration. If it's dealer penetration, you know, is there much more to be had on this front?
Laurie?
You know, if you look about that, at the penetration, we still were below about 70% penetrated in RV, so we still have a bit of room. When you get to powersports and even truck, we're in the 30%-35% range. While there's still a lot of room to be able to, you know, increase the yield, there is still much opportunity to continue to grow market share. Even though we're the market leader, there's still a lot of opportunity as these customers continue to move more advertising dollars from traditional advertising into digital. We're seeing that accelerate. There's really a lot of room on both sides.
Great. Just to be clear, is the upper limit 100% or is the upper limit closer to like a 75%, 80% for RVs?
No, I actually think there's. If you are a serious dealer, meaning more than a five or six units on your lot, you should be with Trader. Very few small more mom-and-pop kind of dealers that may have a few units, but outside of that, if you're in the business, you need to be with Trader. I would say it's very close to the 100% in terms of opportunity.
Thank you. Just while still on Trader, you guys have provided that slide in the past around what the revenue profile looks like, and particularly through an economic cycle. I think some of the sort of skeptics in the market would sort of point at that and say there was a big structural element the last time we had a big recession, which is during the GFC. I guess my question is, you know, how can you be so confident that that persists if we do enter a bit of a softer macro environment over the next 12 to 18 months?
Yeah. I think.
Laurie?
We've looked at all different business cycles over my 25 years here. Really, regardless of the conditions that we encounter, we are able to grow through all cycles. I think it's because of what gives me confidence is not only that we've done it in the past, but I think first and foremost, the subscription model is very resilient in tougher times. The second thing is when consumer demand goes down, dealers need us more than ever. We typically see low churn and are typically the last thing that they cancel. We might see some downgrades, and we've seen that historically, you know, based on particularly brandy products, but very low cancels as the dealers want to keep the inventory in front of interested consumers.
I think the third thing is the balance of new and used inventory, as well as the balance between dealer and private seller. In tough times, private seller accelerates, and that helps protect the business as well because it's a, you know, we push on that lever from a revenue driver. There's just so many levers in the business to make sure that we can scale and grow regardless of the cycle.
Thanks, Laurie. Just my second question was in relation to private. It looks like Instant Offer was a pretty big contributor to volume growth here. I just wanted to check if we backed out IO from volume, is it fair to say listing volumes is close to that mid-single digit positive growth mark?
You wanna do that, Will?
Yeah, I think one of the things we talked about is we're sort of stepping away from giving the split of IO and the rest of volumes just 'cause obviously it's a really competitive market. It's fair to say that's had a significant impact and contribution to that 39% revenue growth you've seen. You know, yield private ad volume and Instant Offer have all been very strong contributors to that.
Fair enough. Okay. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Darren.
The next question comes from Paul Mason with E&P. Please go ahead.
Hi. Just two from me. The first one's just on SELECT. I'm just wondering if you could give us some color, obviously like towards the end of the year, you were seeing like really, really strong point in time volumes there, but it looks like it sort of drifted a little bit to start the year. Is there anything sort of going on outside of like time to sell with that product, strategy-wise? The second one was just on Encar, and I was just wondering if you guys could give your thoughts on whether you might put through more significant price rises like we're seeing in a lot of classified businesses given high inflation. Thanks.
Yeah, thanks. Espiridion, you wanna talk Encar first?
Yeah. I think regarding price increase, you're right. I mean, there's inflation across the world. We are seriously consider about the price rise and having a coherent communication and dialogue within the management team.
At the same time, we try to take it into account a unique competitive dynamics here in Korea because most of the other classified ad player in a pre-owned vehicle trading industry, including the KBChaChaCha or ChaCha or Bobae are providing the dealers with the free of charge of the listing or below the one-third of the price of our entry product, which is AUD 25. I mean, given there's a variety of the product that we have, I mean, we continue to looking at is there any particular room for us to go for the price wise in terms of when and how much, in what way, we will continue to look at it throughout the second half of that.
Paul, just on Select, just over the last six months, we've been focused a lot more around product development and the whole consumer experience rather than inventory. That's probably why you might have seen a slight drop, especially towards the latter half of the first half. We've been more selective around what inventory we get on so that we can test and learn from that product development perspective. As far as time to sell it has been concerned, Select's still proving a strong option. We're very buoyant on what we're doing and where we're going from that digital retailing experience.
All right. Thanks a lot.
The next question comes from Tom Beadle with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I just had some on Trader Interactive and then one on private. I'll just ask the Trader Interactive one. I thought it was really impressive result. Just on that 6% yield growth, I know it's a little bit less than that 8% in price increase that you put through. Is the difference there just mix and trucks, or have you observed any dealers downgrading their subscriptions at all? Can you also just talk to the size of the price increases that you're about to put through this half? Just a general question. Can you talk to the health of the dealers across your verticals?
Like, what are you seeing on dealer numbers at the market level, and have you seen any evidence on of pressure on any of those dealers, or are they holding up for now?
That was all right. Laurie?
Yep, sure. I'll start with that. I think overall, the dealers are doing very well. I think that at the end of 2022, there was a little bit of concern about maybe RV demand, and we were hearing some rumblings from the dealers. January, as we started to see those RV consumer shows, really high optimism around the attendance at those shows. I think that's given everybody a bit more confidence that there is demand out there. We've spoken to many, many dealers who had really good January. I think, you know, we're feeling good there. I think the other verticals, if you look at Powersports, they are back finally feeling good about the inventory levels that they're seeing.
They were very low inventory for some time, so I think they're finally feeling like they have inventory to meet the demand. Trucks still a little low on inventory, depending on the location and the segment, but definitely seeing good increases and consumers who weren't or dealers who weren't really able to advertise because they had such low inventory levels to coming on board now. Part of that revenue driving that we're seeing is that record customer count growth as we bring more Powersports and commercial truck dealers onto the platform as inventory levels have come on. A lot of optimism there. Equipment, you know, seems to be, you know, being consistent, not really different than where it's been over the last several months. I think all of them, you know, we're feeling good about that.
As you look at the price increase and specifically the percentages as you look at the growth, Cam and Will talked about this earlier, part of the reason that the percentage is a little bit off is that the opt-out was launched in October, we only had three months in the first half. Those growth run rates are better in this new half coming up. If you look at, you know, our forecast here, we have a slightly higher rate lift actually this year, effective March 1st. We've already announced to the dealers on February 1st. We're expecting it to be more around the 7% across the dealers. That leads to you know, 5% overall in the dealer marketplace.
We feel very, you know, optimistic, and it's a little bit stronger actually than our last price rise. We also have dynamic pricing that was launched in February. We're feeling optimistic on Top Spot. All of those things are really leading to us feeling confident going into the second half and having it even being better than our first half.
Great. Thanks for that. Just a quick question on private. You know, you're taking, you know, I think you mentioned you're taking share there, that's obviously really impressive. You know, can you just talk about how you've managed to take share in private? Like, is this a geographical thing? Is this at any particular price points, or have the share gains been somewhat spread evenly? Can you just talk about how micro bracketing has played into that?
Thanks, Tom. I think, I mean, our shares increased 'cause our competitive position has increased. I think we're still, you know, we're the place to sell from an Australian perspective. That's been, that's had a really positive impact from a private perspective. Prices have really helped that and that balance between dealer and privates on our site helps that C2C aspect. From a pure private perspective, our features around trust and safety, what the consumer gets, you know, the trust that they have with us as a selling platform is really shines out in a market like today.
You know, I think where we've gone from a dynamic pricing perspective, we've really tried to test and learn. We've followed the market. We've tried to make it value from a feature perspective. You know, We're well positioned to move into this half, but also when, you know, and if, we do expect prices to come off at some point. What the micro bracketing enables us to do is be able to move with that as that pricing does change.
Thanks a lot.
The next question comes from Kane Hannan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Just sorry for me as well, please. Just Trader Interactive commentary in January, February around the revenue growth expanding. Was that the case in January and then potentially stepped up in further February as dynamic pricing came in? Or is that comment more of a, you know, combined across both those months?
Yep. No, I'm happy to take that. Yeah, you only see the benefit of dynamic pricing starting from Feb, Kane. Any incremental benefit from that will only be in Feb. I think, you know, Jan and Feb have both been positive months from a run rate perspective versus the first half where growth was at 11%. I think it's, you know, it's across the board in terms of the positive signs that we're seeing and that Laurie's seeing around, you know, customer acquisition, obviously the benefit of the price rise. We've got the yield uplift from the upsells. Now some other growth levers coming in around, you know, the dynamic pricing in Feb.
Obviously we've talked about the potential for Top Spot, a new depth product to also be additive to growth in the second half. That's sort of what gives confidence around adding that comment in.
Yeah, perfect. Then just Group cost growth slowing in the second half. Is that just more investment in the PCP or are you starting to see a more favorable hiring market, you know, maybe pulling back on some of the investment spending coming through?
Yeah, I think it's a combination of the two. Definitely comparatively, the first half was a lower cost half because we're in lockdown in some parts of the world. You know, Australia, Brazil being two. I think we're still, you know, we're still investing in a lot of the new product that has driven the revenue growth accelerating that you've seen. We're certainly not taking our foot off, but we're conscious that we're in an environment where things might become a little bit more difficult and we've got great cost levers at our disposal to be able to manage our margin. It's really good to be able to go out with a statement where we expect margins to expand for the full year.
Perfect. Cam, you made the comment around not having met Eduardo yet in your opening remarks. Are we expecting him to make an appearance at the full year results?
No, I mean, well, I mean, we try and get, as you guys know from these calls, we try and get all our execs, on the calls at some point in time. Eduardo's got a great business in Webmotors, and he's done a tremendous job in building it over a number of years. Yeah, I'm just flagging that it'd be, it'd be good to get him on one of these calls, and just give him some recognition for the work that he's done. That's all.
Yeah, beautiful. Cheers, guys.
Your next question comes from Roger Samuel with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, guys. I've got two questions. The first one is on your dealer revenue. You mentioned about the introduction of a premium price tier. Can you just give us some color around that premium price tier? Is it a new product? What's the take-up rate? What's the percentage of your depth product now in the dealer segment?
Thanks, Roger. The premium price tier around the leads is for cars over 70,000. I mean, it represents less than 1% of the takes. But it has given us some optionality there, especially around the higher prices of used cars. From a depth perspective, we had just under 50% of our dealers using depth in December 2022, which was up from around 44% in December 2021. Most of that increase was in Q2 of the first half. From a, you know, we expect that in H2 as inventory increases to increase a little bit more.
Okay. All right. My second question is on Korea. It looks like you've got a margin expansion there versus PCP. Are you still thinking about investing in marketing given there's pretty intense competition in Korea and but in potentially that margin may decline next year?
Yes. I think regarding the marketing spending, given that as you might be know that the C2B market is emerging from the offline trading into the online auction, and that is where the section, the new competition from many players are getting into, we continue to invest. One thing good for that is as Will mentioned before, I mean, marketing is a good flexible lever that we can manage spending on the context in a nimble way to protect our margin as well. I think, I mean, even if we continue to consider to invest, depending on the situation, we are ready to flexibly manage it and adjust that, depending on how the performance is going forward.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Nick Basile with CLSA. Please go ahead.
Morning, Cameron and Will and team. Just two questions from me. The first one, just to pick up on Cameron's comments regarding new car supply. Just interested how that or an easing of used car prices might impact the yield growth in the private seller business in Australia. I think you're saying that it may be a bit more of a difficult comp in the second half. Just sort of curious how we should think about that 16% moderating in the second half. The second one, just on group costs, falling year-over-year in those percentage terms. Can you give us a sense of some of the mix of that decline, sort of what is, you know, perhaps wage cost or moderating marketing spend?
Yeah. I'll get that first one just on the, you know, around consumer demand we're seeing is still up. We're seeing the new car prices are strong. This is really continuing to drive used car prices to around 40% above pre-pandemic levels. We don't think that that's going to come down quickly. At some stage it will turn lower. Over the second half and what we'll be doing from a dynamic pricing point of view and what we have the ability to do now is to mitigate any impact through our micro bracketing. You know, we're still in pretty good shape to counter any decrease in prices.
Nick, just in terms of cost growth, I think the comment really applies to all the key buckets of our costs, so personnel, marketing, technology and other costs in terms of, you know, the moderating growth rates. I don't think it's in one area specifically.
Okay, thanks very much. Cheers.
Excellent. I think we're right on time now. Just wanted to thank everyone for joining the call today, and we look forward to seeing you all over the next couple of days.