Can you hear me, Katrina?
Yeah. All good. We'll start in a minute, just letting everyone roll in.
[inaudible] Okay.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Frontier Digital Ventures FY 2022 full year results briefing. All participants are in listen only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please type it to the host using the chat function. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Shaun Di Gregorio, founder and CEO. Please go ahead.
Afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining our full year results call. We posted the results this morning along with this deck that I'll walk you through over the next 20 or 30 minutes. As many of you might know, we do release our quarterly update, and when we do that, we include most of the financial information for the preceding period, which in this case would have covered the full year. This is obviously a more complete and full report of the full year results. We'll walk through those this morning. In terms of what we'll cover, we'll go through the statutory results. We'll have a look at some of the financials and more importantly, remind people of the strategy that underlies the business as well.
Just to give people who might be newer to the story some background. Our group is structured across three key geographies being LATAM, Asia and MENA. LATAM is now the biggest business for us and is making up almost 60% of our revenue. Includes four market leading brands across LATAM. I'll give you more information about how we're progressing in that part of the world shortly. Asia, as you can see, a basket of brands there, and also MENA, which is the smallest, but an important part of the group and one that we're doing a bit of work on at the moment. You can see the relative share of revenue. You can see the relative share of their, the operating EBITDA.
One, I guess, function of all of these brands is that we do focus on market leadership, which is critical when you're running an online classifieds business and obviously, using that DNA or that market position to leverage the economic opportunity that exists across our markets. By way of categorization today, as I mentioned, we'll look at some of the statutory results, go into the LATAM strategy. There's a lot happening for us in LATAM, which is exciting. We have a new management team there, and the business has got a really clear goal over the next couple of years, and it's probably the most evolved of our three geographies as well.
Update you on what's happening in Asia and MENA, as I mentioned, dive into the strategy, so you understand what it is we're doing to power some of the financial results. When we look into section one, which is the statutory results, some key highlights which we'll give more information about. We've actually had an improved EBITDA result, which has been great. All of the individual geographies have had an improved EBITDA result over the year. We continue to focus on sustainable growth. Of course, getting through to a maiden or our first statutory operating EBITDA profitability is a significant achievement for FDV. Just diving into the portfolio and statutory results a little more. Some of the key highlights.
At an operating level, when we look at our three key geographies, we recorded a positive EBITDA at an operating level of AUD 6.5 million. That was underlied by some significant improvements, as I mentioned, across all of the geographies. The portfolio EBITDA margin is something we're focused on continuing to grow. We managed to do that. We've hit a full year economic share revenue of AUD 82 million. Our bank balance or our balance sheet continues to be very healthy. We're very focused on our operating cash flows. In all three regions, as we finished the year, we're able to trade at an operating cash flow positive level, which is very significant. Needless to say, as 2022 unfolded, the world changed pretty quickly.
You know, we recognized that the world was changing also, and we certainly took some significant steps through the course of the year to ensure that our businesses were as efficient as they could possibly be while still focusing on top line growth. It's a tricky balance to get right, but we feel that we've got a really good handle on making sure we continue to focus on growth, while of course, focusing on what is really important at the moment, which is cash and obviously getting the businesses all to be profitable and certainly at a group level to see that EBITDA improvement. 2022, I think if you could characterize it was an extremely busy year. It was a year that finished very differently to how it started in a macro sense.
I think we entered 2022 in a strong position. I think we finished it in an even stronger position given the operating performance of the companies we managed to achieve. Just when we look at that operating EBITDA level. This is the sum of LATAM, Asia and MENA. You can see over time that we've gradually improved on the portfolio EBITDA, which is again something we said we were focused on for some time. We've managed to continue that trajectory. There's some standout performances. We saw significant improvement in MENA at an EBITDA level and particularly in Avito. Just by way of example, when we acquired Avito a couple of years ago, in the preceding calendar year, it had lost, I think close to AUD 3 million.
That business became profitable in 2022. Some really good examples, when you dive into the portfolio. At a headline level, we managed to improve all of the regions we're in. Most of the businesses improved on an EBITDA basis. Of course, we still focused very strongly on top line growth. One of the Opportunities for companies at the moment, and they're really good companies, will find getting the mix right between top line growth and making sure that you are demonstrating that your business model works and you can deliver, you know, profitable businesses. That continues to be a strong focus for us.
I think, you know, it was a, it was a very difficult needle to thread in the latter half of last year, but it puts us in a really strong position as we head into 2023. Just again, looking at margin, excuse me. It's something we're focused on pretty acutely over time. We've got 11 of our 15 companies actually improved, which was a pretty good result given the trading conditions that we faced. This is a chart that we continue to focus on and continuing that EBITDA journey is important for us.
As I said, it's the challenge at the moment for a lot of companies, and the really good companies will get it right, is focusing on top line growth and making sure your strategy is really clear, making sure you can execute it, and making sure you're doing it as efficiently as possible. You know, we're seeing our companies really focus on getting that balance right, and I think many of them certainly have. When you look at the EBITDA breakdown just over 2022, as I said, there's some standout performances. You know, the good thing for us is that all of our regions improved and all but most of our individual companies improved. That was obviously, as I said at the outset, something that we recognized early in 2022.
Whilst we, you know, we're very much a growth company, you've got to be able to demonstrate that your strategy works. You've got to be able to demonstrate that your business model works. Doing that means that you've got to run proper companies, and proper companies are profitable. That's what most of our companies have now achieved that goal. Certainly all of our regions. As I said, there were some standout performances through the back half of 2022 particularly. I think all, you know, all companies that were trading through that back half recognized it was a challenging period. I think, you know, by way of example, you know, Avito was a standout, as you can see from the results, 21 into 22.
Much focus on making sure that we're running really strong profitable companies. Much focus on making sure we continue to grow. Getting that balance right is, as I said, the big challenge for most companies at the moment. When you look at just that top line growth, again, the charts sort of speak for themselves. You can see that COVID put a handbrake on a lot of things, but we've recovered pretty strongly and have continued to grow into 2020. It's interesting that when you look at the individual regions that we now have. You know LATAM for example, just on an economic share basis, which is the chart on the right-hand side, has had revenues of sort of circa AUD 45 million.
It's almost twice the size that the whole group was, all but a couple of years ago. If you look back to 2020, for example, our LATAM business alone, is all but twice the size of the entire group. You know, we think we got a lot of things right during that COVID period. We think we've got a lot of things right as we've come out of that COVID period and obviously into the very different environment that preceded it. If you get your settings right, if your strategy's right, you can continue to run really good businesses. And just proportionately looking at our individual regions, both LATAM and Asia, both, you know, significantly bigger than the entire FDV group was only sort of 18 months to two years ago. Really focused on sustainable growth.
Sustainable growth obviously means you wanna be profitable, and we think we're getting that mix pretty well right. When you look at the revenue breakdown, just to give you the understanding, there's a 100% view which is getting closer and closer to our economic share view. Certainly in LATAM, we own 100% of all of the companies there. That mirrors the economic share view. In Asia, we don't own 100% of all of the companies there, so the 100% view varies from the economic share view. Similarly in MENA now we own 100% of the companies now, so that mirrors the economic share view. Over time, we hope to get to those two views to mirror one another.
LATAM and MENA are at 100% pretty much like for like on a 100% basis and economic share view. Asia's the one that differentiates a little bit. That's just to help people understand the best way to look at our performance, in any given period. Just to understand our statutory results, they're a little bit complicated just by way of how our group is structured. We do go to some lengths to help readers understand. At an operating statutory level, you can see our revenues, that's all of the consolidated companies. When you then consolidate up the equity accounted companies and you get a group operating EBITDA, which includes all of our costs.
At a group operating EBITDA level, you see our, you see our consolidated entities, you see our share of the equity accounted entities, you see all of our corporate or centralized costs. For the first time, we've managed to achieve a positive EBITDA at that really important statutory level. There's a whole lot of stuff happens below the line. There's significant D&A charges at the moment which relate to the amortization of assets that were purchased a couple of years ago. They'll slowly expire over the next 12-18 months. There's some calculations around some contingency payments which we have, which again are below the line, and a bit of FX movement, which we're working to minimize over time. The important line to zero in on is that group operating EBITDA.
As I said, for the first time, we've managed to now achieve a positive operating EBITDA. That's all of our revenues, all of our costs, and the best way to look at the statutory view. Obviously, when we look at the operating view, we're very focused on the company portfolio performance. We're very clear about saying we wanna get that portfolio performance closer to the statutory view. The statutory view obviously includes our central costs. As I said, for the first time, we've now got a positive group operating EBITDA.
That was a significant achievement that's taken a lot of work over time and we hope to continue to improve upon that over the next periods. When you look at our strategy, just to remind people of kinda how we get there, and this is pretty important. One of the most important geographies for us at the moment is LATAM. It's probably the most evolved of our three regionals. Sorry, excuse me. Our three regions. It's the best way to get a look at how our strategy will unfold more generally. In LATAM, we have 100% of the assets or the businesses, really critical. We've put in place recently, and I'll touch on who they are, a really strong local management team.
Our ambition was always to get from minorities into 100% and then really construct a business that could run itself. We're a long way down that path now. It's had really strong 2022, and it's got a really strong strategy that is really based around its core classifieds businesses, but then augmenting those with the ability to help consumers through to the point of transaction. There's a lot of excitement about this region for us. There's a lot of optimism about it, particularly with the new management team coming in, and there's a lot of ambition around what we think this could be.
Remember that in 2022, FDV LATAM, for us, was in terms of revenues, twice the size of the entire FDV business only about 18 months ago or two years ago. Much excitement about this part of the world. Just to remind people of the businesses that are in it. InfoCasas, Fincaraíz, Encuentra24, and Yapo. All market leaders, all in markets that we've identified as good long-term opportunities and all with really strong classifieds DNA, but all with the ability to then augment that with the longer term economic opportunity, which is helping consumers get past the search and discover phase and get through to the transaction phase. That's what these businesses are very focused on. Just to touch on the management team that is now running FDV LATAM.
Up until recently, if you consider the evolution of this region for us, it was finding businesses that we liked in markets that we liked. It was finding operators that we liked, starting out as minorities. Over time, as the businesses started to grow and develop, we would buy 100% of them, to the point where we signaled that, you know, ideally, you wanna then set this region free. By setting it free, we mean appointing a team that can run it more effectively locally than we are able to from Malaysia. For obvious reasons. The CEO of FDV LATAM is Ricardo. He was running InfoCasas, very successful business. Made a ton of sense to have someone with his background, his record of success, to step in and run the region.
We've put together a relatively small centralized management team, which drew from Fincaraíz, the CFO, Martin Coulthurst and Guillermo, who was the CTO of InfoCasas as well. We have a relatively small but very effective centralized team that is now running day-to-day the LATAM business. A very clear strategy, very clear mandate. Build out the classifieds leadership and ensure that you have clear market leadership, leveraging that to then go much closer to the transaction for consumers and sellers. A whole lot of work that goes around product, a whole lot of work that goes around traffic generation. Traffic obviously gives you leads. Leads ultimately become transactions.
We've done a lot of restructuring work over Q4, which means making all of the businesses far more efficient than they previously were, and obviously lowering costs at the same time. The ambition was always to get to this point. Part of the benefit of getting to now is you can run a much leaner, much more efficient group as LATAM. Before, four businesses duplicating a lot of functions. We've now managed to streamline a lot of that, and by doing so, taken out a lot of the costs and now have a far more efficient structure wrapped around LATAM. This was always where we wanted to get to. It was always a strategy and a structure that we laid out for investors.
It was really pleasing to be able to put this in place last year. We're seeing, you know, really positive results come out of having this structure in place. You know, obviously from a cost perspective, but moreover from a growth and value perspective. They've got been remitted with a really ambitious plan, which is to take the business through to an event in the future, whatever that might be. The team are very excited. It's a much more dynamic structure we have around these LATAM businesses now with a really high quality local, you know, management team running it. The value of having a really strong local management team can't be understated. We're really pleased where this has got us.
Ultimately, having a structure like this in place will allow, you know, FDV at a corporate or whole co level to be much leaner and efficient as well. All about being efficient, all about having a really tight cost base, but then really focusing on the value that can be created in these businesses. If you look at just the profile of LATAM, I'll stop on this for a moment. You can see its growth over time. You can see that it's quite biased toward the property vertical, which is a really high value vertical.
More interestingly, when you look at the split of revenues, we now have, you know, a really significant chunk of the revenue starting to come from facilitating consumers, being able to go past the search and discover phase and actually, be assisted to complete the transaction with the seller. Be really clear, we've always been advocates of this strategy. We've always been advocates of maintaining that really clear strong leadership basis in a classified sense. We've always been advocates of helping people transact. That's very distinctly different from some of the models that have come and gone through the last couple of years, which have survived on, you know, free capital and crazy markets, which were out there advocating this idea of buying your house or buying your car and trying to flip it.
We've never advocated that model. I think the evidence in the market is now pretty clear as to why. What we have advocated in markets where there is low levels of trust is helping consumers get past the search and discover phase and giving them certainty. Giving them a trusted environment in which they can continue to do much more past just the transaction. Just to by way of example, to look into InfoCasas. This gives you a bit of a profile as to one of the businesses, and a lot of the reason why we selected Ricardo to run LATAM is, was because of the success in InfoCasas. Clearly demonstrated, excuse me. The profile that underlies the classified space and the growth that they've managed to achieve in really augmenting that base with transactions revenue.
They've gone about it in a way that's been very tech-enabled. This is the Smart Path, and utilizing big data, which is a big catchphrase, but it's real and it works. Very good at segmenting leads. This goes back to the idea of being very good at market leadership, having really strong traffic to your site. Actually taking a lot of that traffic and turning it into high value leads to your sellers. Using things like AI-empowered digital sales engines to help qualify those leads and point them to properties that your sellers have that are most likely to transact. There's a whole lot of tech that's now overlapping, this idea of helping consumers get through, you know, past search and discover into transactions.
It's a template that we're trying to roll out now using the experience and the success of InfoCasas. Before our structure, as I said in FDV LATAM, was four businesses that were doing their own thing, trying to learn from each other. Now it's a much more effective structure in being able to roll out the success we've had in InfoCasas or any of the other businesses for that matter via a centralized team that is now guiding each of those businesses as a more efficient single operating entity into being able to execute against some of the things that have gone really well in the businesses in FDV LATAM. In terms of where we wanna get with this. You know, we see the opportunity. We've made this very clear and very public. We wanna get the business out of FDV LATAM.
This is just FDV LATAM from where it is today, with this ambitious goal to get to sort of $100 million U.S. Revenue. We think that there's a clear path to get there based on just organic growth. We think that the markets right around the world, and certainly LATAM, have sort of been shaken out a little bit over the last 12 months. We think that that could potentially lead to M&A opportunities over time. We think that we're really well-positioned to get there organically. We think we're really well-positioned by way of having, you know, market-leading businesses that are profitable, in good markets in this region. We think we're really well-positioned to take advantage of some of the disruption that's happening around markets around us.
It's all about getting you into the strongest possible position so you can execute against this plan over the next couple of years. We've sort of outed ourselves in a sense and said, "This is our ambition, this is our plan." We think we can build a really successful business. We've got a great foundation. We've achieved a lot of the milestones that we set ourselves some time back. That's to get them all to 100%, get a really strong leadership team in place, and then execute against a clear plan over the next couple of years to maximize the value that's sitting inside LATAM. Just to touch on Asia and MENA. I'm conscious of the time. Asia business, so it has continued to grow. It's continued to be profitable, which is great.
You can see that it's probably a little more evolved on two fronts. One is that it's even more bent toward property with a smaller auto contribution, but it's evolved more rapidly toward helping consumers complete transactions as well. Interestingly, it used to be, you know, I guess the area we spoke about the most. It's interesting over time that the work we've done in LATAM and what we've created in LATAM is now probably what we talk about more. That's encouraging because it obviously spreads our revenue a little more in terms of de-risking it. Means that we're not relying on any one market. We've got really good spread across the three regions now, which is much more comforting.
When we look at MENA, a big focus for us in 2022 was to improve the EBITDA picture in this part of the world. Keep in mind that all of our revenues have probably suffered just by virtue of FX movements. They're a little healthier when you look in local currency, but when you convert them back, our big focus in 2022 for MENA was to get it to be profitable. The biggest business there is Avito, and that's gone from a $3 million loss when we acquired it, through to now being profitable at a statutory level in 2022. Again, that was a really important milestone for us to achieve.
It's been done largely off the back of leveraging the classifieds business in that region, which really says to me there's a lot of opportunity now we've got this on a much more sustainable level to be able to grow it and start to venture down the path of helping consumers complete transactions. A lot of work being done, I guess, behind the scenes in MENA to get it to a sustainable position. Now that the, I guess the focus, you know, we double down on growth given that we've got very little or minimal contributions from transaction revenues today. Again, it's well set for the future. Just to remind people of the strategy.
This is an old slide, but one we'll repeat just to keep people's understanding of it relevant. Our, our strategy has always been to look at early-stage opportunities, identify them by virtue of our focus on emerging markets. Finding those that, you know, make sense. Step one is always to ensure that you've got clear market leadership. That's a really important factor, and it continues to be. When you're a market leader, you tend to have a lot of opportunities. The fundamental part of the business is to grow the classifieds business. That underpins a lot of what we wanna do in the future. The future is about leveraging the classifieds business, so we can get closer to the transaction over time.
That's all about helping consumers get past search and discover. Then leverage the economics of the transaction, which is what classifieds businesses fundamentally provide for anyway. They tend to get stuck at only being able to make revenues from classified. Again, the model's really clear for us. When we look at just what that means. I guess when you double-click on, you know, this evolution of classifieds into transactions. You can see, you know, the traditional model, which is very straightforward. It's about a whole lot of content. It's about a good UX. It's about connecting buyers with sellers. Typically, you know, a lot of that would end up then moving offline.
What the transaction-based marketplaces do is to keep consumers in your environment, keep them engaging with the sellers, and try and keep them, you know, on your website for longer, which enables you to do more for them. It not only obviously unlocks opportunities at the point of the transaction, but it unlocks opportunities from, you know, search and discover through to the transaction. That can mean, you know, in the context of a property portal, it's about financing, it's about inspections. With car portals, it's about warranties, it's about insurance. These are often termed the ancillary revenue opportunities. It's important to note that you don't just leapfrog from search and discover through to, you know, helping someone complete a transaction.
There are a lot of opportunities on the pathway to the transaction which portals and businesses like ours seek to benefit from. That's a really important part of the long-term strategy, is just to understand this evolution. It's not a swap from classifieds to transactions. It's very much an evolution of that model that is occurring, and we seek to leverage that over time. Why do you wanna do that? Well, if you look at the economics of it's pretty clear. When you look at the, you know, the classified revenue on a per lead basis, for example, and then you can look at the transactions revenue at the point of the transaction. The economics of the opportunity is really compelling.
That's about taking a lead, which once would have left your environment and simply following it through and watching it convert to the transaction. Our strategy is really clear. I guess the compelling reason why is evident to us, and that's something we'll continue to communicate to our investors over time. This slide is one that we always include because people always ask us. You know, moving from left to right, from bottom to top rather, is a really simple way of understanding the overall strategy going from classifieds into a marketplace, helping transactions occur, and then of course, you know, being an intermediary over time for transactions in a classified sense.
You know, the monetization opportunities are becoming much clearer. You know, we know that, our EMPG, which is the parent company and other shareholders, I mean, are progressing toward an IPO. We've made it clear that we think, you know, FDV LATAM could do something similar. We're starting to see those monetization opportunities become much clearer. More importantly, I guess the pathway to those monetizations opportunities becoming much clearer as well. It's not something that we sit around and think about every minute of every day. It's important that you have a long-term view of how you're gonna create value.
We're starting to see much more of this start to become more tangibly real, and something that businesses can more realistically work toward than perhaps they have done in the past. 2022 was a really busy year. It was a year that changed a lot through the course of it. We think we kept a really good handle on, you know, what was important, the important drivers, and we finished the year really strongly. As we look toward 2023, our priorities remain pretty clear and pretty straightforward for that matter. It's continuing to make sure that, you know, the companies are operating in the most efficient way possible, continue to ensure that that means growing revenues, but doing it in a way that is sustainable and, you know, sustainable businesses make profits.
That's what we're increasingly focused on ensuring our businesses do. Growth, absolutely. Efficiency, absolutely, more than ever. That means you've got proper businesses and proper businesses of course make money. The growing the operating metrics, this is critical because that's all of the work that goes on in the background. It's all of the work that typically goes on day to day in order to make sure you can have sustainable and high-quality companies. Of course, you then always, in the back of your mind, and as I alluded to on the previous slide, thinking about, you know, the value that you're creating and how you can achieve that over time.
As I said, it's interesting that, you know, just FDV LATAM today has almost twice as much revenue as our group had only two years ago. We think that we're getting the first box right, which is continuing to drive growth and profitability. You can see that by the results. What people probably don't see is a lot of the work that goes on, which is the, you know, the growing the operating metrics. That's the day to day. That's the grind that goes on in each business. It's super important because, you know, if you get the operating metrics right, the financials tend to look after themselves. Of course, the opportunity to think of new creation types is sort of the third piece of those priorities for 2023.
In the rest of the deck, there's a whole bunch of additional information which I won't go through, but I'll leave people to go through at their leisure. It just goes to some of the background, a little bit of the register, a bit more history, a bit more history over time. Again, helps people understand our statutory accounts and of course, is valuable if people wanna just double-click on some of the underlying information that's included in the deck. Katrina, I'll click back to the beginning. If we wanna then take questions, can do so now.
Yeah. Perfect. Thanks, Shaun. Just a reminder to our audience that if you have a question, you can type it to the Host and panelists in this function. Our first question for today: What does success look like in 2023 via FDV LATAM region? How are you thinking about monetization pathways for MENA now that you're essentially at, group center of that region?
FDV LATAM has, I guess, has a bit of a three-year plan in a sense. 2022 was about getting the settings right. It was about getting the team in place. It was about getting the efficiency level right. We did a ton of work, particularly in the second half of the year on that. 2023 is about execution of the plan. The plan is to grow the region. It's to grow it profitably and to grow it, cashflow positively. That's the first piece. The second piece is to continue to make sure that we leverage the IP or the expertise that's been accumulated in those four businesses individually. Particular success that's come out of InfoCasas. This is something we've spoken about historically.
It's now something we've put a structure in place that enables us to do it. The second piece is to take the learnings, particularly from InfoCasas and the success they've had, and push those into the other businesses. That's the second part of the equation. The third part is really a function of the first two, which is to run really strong businesses, really efficient businesses and market-leading businesses. I guess we'll look for opportunities to grow. We think that, you know, given what's happening in the world, you know, we're very patient, but we're very observant of potential for M&A. We think that, you know, that's another way that we can grow LATAM in 2023. They're the three fundamental sort of boxes that we're focused on in LATAM. With MENA, again, a lot of the heavy lifting done.
We've now sort of refashioned it a little bit in terms of what's there. We've got Avito, which was critical to get from a loss-making to be profitable. Avito has existed for, I think 10-12 years. It's never been profitable till now. Until we got our hands on it had never been profitable. We've achieved that milestone. That's a significant piece of work that was undertaken through 2020. In terms of 2023, when you get to that milestone, you wanna make sure that it's sustainable, number one. That's what we'll do in 2023. We'll continue to look to really build out in MENA, which its revenue is almost wholly from its classifieds base.
We think that there's opportunities to now Given you've got the businesses much better set to now say, "Well, how can we go further with consumers and sellers around opening up, you know, revenue opportunities around the transaction as well?" Because that's what those businesses fundamentally do. Of course, we'll keep one eye out for the potential for M&A. I think in MENA it's about sustaining what we achieved in 2022 and starting to shift to the revenue mix, which is dominated by its classifieds revenue, which is great. We really think that there's opportunities, number one, to grow that classifieds piece. number two, to start to do and think about how we can do more around transactions, given we have a fundamentally much stronger base in MENA than we've had before.
Thank you. Our next question relates to a contingent consideration. Could you please provide an update on the timing and options for payment?
I think that's, I think it's, if I'm not wrong, and I'll have to defer to our CFO, he's on the call. That it's due in sort of May, around that time. That, the amount of the contingent consideration is still. That'll be a subject of audit, which is underway and ongoing. The way in which you can pay that, we've got a really healthy balance sheet. Fundamentally, that's the first thing you look to. All of our businesses or all of our regions are now cash flow positive. That's an important milestone when you think about contingent liabilities.
Of course, we know that, you know, there's lots of movement around the shape of our portfolio as well. It's a little way, it's a little off in terms of timing in terms of it being due around May. The volume of that consideration, as I said, is still being determined. We have a really healthy balance sheet, and our businesses at an operating level have reached cash flow positive. We think we're really well-positioned to meet that consideration.
Thanks, Shaun. Our next question is, what specific new countries or markets do you think look the most interesting for an investment?
Well, it's probably no one individual country. What we do have when we look at our regions are a set of countries that we tend to follow, and we've followed for a long time. I would say in LATAM, we're probably reasonably well covered in terms of markets we wanna be in. I think in LATAM, for us, we've always said that we don't really wanna be in Brazil, we don't really wanna be in Argentina, and we don't wanna be in Mexico. They're the three markets that are the most difficult. What we have done is probably chosen markets where you can be a clear leader, and the evidence is now, you know, obvious in our financials of what leadership means.
We're focused on markets where the competition is less and less competition means it's far cheaper to operate. I think in LATAM, we're fairly well covered. In MENA, it's probably more interesting. Our big focus, as I said, has been getting the existing businesses right. Our geographic footprint is relatively modest. There are some significant markets in that region we'll monitor through the course of this year. I think Asia is probably the interesting one where we've been very selective at the markets we're in, and for good reason. you know, what we are seeing in Asia is businesses that perhaps weren't as fundamentally strong or had fundamentally good strategies, business strategies.
You know, if you were wobbly going into 2022, you're probably highly stressed now. We think that there'll be stress to businesses in Asia over the course of 2023. Where they will be? Well, I can't predict that. You know, there are some substantial markets in Asia. You just can't have so many businesses doing the same thing as is the case today, where many of them are trying to do models that fundamentally don't work. A lot of the models that don't work are where portals, car portals or property portals say they're gonna buy your car from you or buy your house from you, and then try and flip it, you know, in a 28-day period. It's often referred to as the iBuyer model.
They're the businesses that are mostly stressed. Why? Because that model fundamentally doesn't really work. It's not scalable and it's not sustainable. We've seen evidence of that in developed markets where, you know, large portals have flipped to that model. We've seen it's just not sustainable. We've seen it. We've seen people walk away from that model. What that's left is a fair bit of carnage in businesses that were trying to do that. They're everywhere. They're in LATAM, they're in Asia, they're in MENA. You know, we'll see what happens over the course of 2023. I think we've been on the record as saying it was never a model that we thought was a good idea.
Those that were pursuing it probably found out the hard way, which is sad for them, but it might be good for us because, you know, amongst all of that wreckage, there could be some good opportunities. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Thanks, Shaun. Could you please provide an update on Zameen, the operating environment in Pakistan and any progress with EMPG out there?
Yeah. The first thing is, you know, if you read the news, you'll know that Pakistan's had some economic difficulties over the last few months. That's clear to everyone to see. What they are in the process of doing is negotiating an IMF loan. It's interesting that I was just doing some research, and I think there's 195 countries officially in the world. More than 100 of them have had IMF loans. I think when you hear that headline, it obviously is quite shocking when you hear IMF loan. When you look beneath the covers, it's quite amazing the number of countries that have been down that path.
Generally, IMF loans come with a whole lot of conditions, and those conditions are generally geared around, you know, economic discipline and putting in place whether it's policies, tax rises, spending cuts, whatever it might be. IMF loans always come with conditions, and those conditions often are to the absolute long-term benefit of the economy in the country. Yep, Pakistan's going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment. Typically that will not last forever. We'll see how far and how close they get to finalizing that IMF loan. Once that's in place, you hope that stability occurs as a consequence of it. Again, I guess we take a very long-term view. We're obviously monitoring that situation really closely. In terms of EMPG progressing to their IPO.
They are continuing on that process and continuing on that preparation. Preparing for an IPO is not a, not a trivial, short or easy undertaking. There's a lot of work that goes into it. You know, they are absolutely continuing on that path. I think their view is that it'll take a while for them to get ready, and it does. In that time that, you know, the situation in Pakistan will probably stabilize and hopefully improve. It's still very much their ambition.
Thank you. That's all the time we have for Q&A today. I'll hand back to Shaun to close your remarks.
Yeah. Firstly, thanks, Katrina, for moderating. Thanks, everyone for dialing in. Many of the people who've been on the call I probably speak to from time to time anyway. Do feel free to reach out directly at any time. Always happy to give time to our investors. I would just remind people of the hard work that went into FDV in 2022, the ability we've now got on an EBITDA and growth basis to head into 2023. Our ability to build good, strong market-leading businesses and have a really clear strategy around where we want them to go and to be ever vigilant.
The important things are our cash balance, cash flow positive, our EBITDA improvements, while really making sure we put a really strong platform in for the next, the next not only 2023 but, you know, and beyond. I think one feature of our business is that we're very aware of the any moment in time, and we're able to pivot and move really quickly, and we've demonstrated that over the last couple of years. We are very focused on building long-term value, and you can't lose sight of that. We think we've always had an ability to get that mix right. We'll continue to focus on that and that's a bit of a feature of our company. Again, thanks everyone for tuning in and thanks again, Katrina.