This meeting is being recorded. We'll get started. Thank you everyone for standing by, and welcome to the Frontier Digital Ventures Half Year 2023 Results Briefing. All participants are in listen-only mode. There will be a presentation, followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the chat and press Submit. I would now like to hand over to Shaun Di Gregorio, Founder and CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning or good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for tuning in again for our half year results. You will have seen much of this information in our quarterly, which came out at the end of July, and this is, of course, our statutory results as presented to the market. Along with the FDV was this investor presentation, which I'm going to step through, not slide by slide, but for the most part. As Katrina, the host, mentioned, certainly happy to take questions once we're through, and you can post those as per the instructions. The headlines for us, just from an overview perspective, again, it's really reminding people that our business is founded on a pretty familiar model, which is the online classifieds marketplace.
These businesses are very well known to a lot of folks, particularly ones in developed markets. We're, of course, in emerging markets across the three regions that I'll talk to in a moment. Key feature of our business is market leadership. So our business in Latam, which is rebranded as 360 Latam. Our business in MENA, which is now rebranded as the MENA Marketplaces Group, and our business in Asia, simply FDV Asia. All of which are made up of market-leading businesses, respectively, whether it's in property, which is primarily the focus for us, automotive or general classifieds. But very focused on those three regions.
Reminding folks, of course, that our model is very much weighted in the familiarity of the online classifieds, but in recent times has moved much closer to doing transaction activity, so that's helping consumers transact beyond the search and discover. The opportunity in emerging markets is significant, and it's where we focus. We're not in developed markets, we're only focused on those emerging markets. As I mentioned, really a big emphasis now on how we move this model from just being about the online marketplace to, in a classified sense, to being more involved in facilitation of transactions. Just to size those markets, these are just the markets in which we operate. So pretty big population base across which we operate.
Significantly bigger than Australia, of course, but very different demographic, but big numbers in many of our markets. So we're operating in markets currently with that level of population and the GDP. If you were to add it all up, again, you get a big number. Now, this is pretty significant internet penetration, but more of emerging markets have always had a real feature, and they're highly mobile. So a lot of our traffic, a lot of our consumers, a lot of our advertisers operate more through their mobile connection necessarily than they do a LAN, like a LAN internet connection. But a big business that we are focused on in terms of the economics and the opportunity that it creates.
Our financial review, again, we telecast earlier with our quarterly, and this is just simply repeating a little bit of information, but on a statutory basis. So these are the companies we consolidate. It's AUD 31.2 million in revenue, and then from our associates was AUD 6.7. So it totals up to about AUD 38 million for the half. We moved to become profitable, both on a statutory basis only, and then with the addition of the EBITDA from those associates, and those associates are our two businesses in Pakistan. So we consolidate all of our other businesses. We equity account for the two businesses in Pakistan. So statutory revenue, statutory profitable, and of course, when you add the revenue from associates, and in addition, the operating EBITDA from those associates as well.
So really strong half on those key metrics. All of our three regions, 360 Latam, the MENA Marketplaces Group and FDV Asia, were operating cash flow positive in the period as well. And we completed, like, a cap raise earlier on in the year, which of course restocked our balance sheet and puts us in a really strong position. So if you look at the key, financial highlights for the group on a statutory basis, you know, revenue, profit, cash. And it's been a lot of the work and a lot of the focus for the business over the last 12 months in trading conditions that have been, you know, interesting and tricky and difficult in some, easier than others. But overall, we've seen, you know, higher interest rates and higher inflation rates.
It's given us an opportunity to take pause and make sure that our businesses are really well run, are well operated, that they're efficient. That's been borne out in the EBITDA performance, the fact that we're cash flow positive in each of the three operating regions, and of course, the revenue's grown in that period as well. This now gives us a really strong foundation as we head into the third quarter of the year, and certainly the second half of the year. So to build on businesses that are now all profitable, that are now all generating cash, and we can really focus on revenue growth.
So getting the businesses through this period has been a feature of, I guess if you were to list out our achievements, it's been a real feature of shepherding them through what have been some tricky trading conditions. But the thing that's boded well for us has been market leadership, it's been the move to profitability which was underway, having the balance sheet really well stocked, and of course, now being very focused on revenue as we start to see some improvement in a number of the countries and regions, across the three geographies that we focus on. Just from a revenue perspective, and again, this is the statutory piece, so you add on to this the share of associates, which is our Pakistan businesses, PakWheels and Zameen.
But just to look at the half-on-half picture, so you can see that we're tracking, again, focusing on growth. We haven't forecast the second half, but certainly given an indication, if we just repeated the first half, we'd be in good shape. But of course, very focused on revenue growth in the second half of the year. And just to emphasize that this is the statutory portion of our revenue that you see in the FDV. We add to that, of course, the revenue from associates, which is the businesses in Pakistan. If you look at the breakdown, so 360 Latam, which is now essentially have its own management team, tracking really well, got all of those businesses to profitability. Some really heavy lifting done with a couple of them.
And now as we head into Q3 and Q4, very much focused on revenue growth, and we'll talk to some of the initiatives that that business is releasing to the market at the moment. And a little bit more about MENA in the back of the deck as well. So again, MENA was a period of consolidation for us, getting the businesses to profitability, which they now are, and now being really focused on growth as we see some more positive signs in the local economies and globally, particularly around inflation abating in some of these markets and interest rates easing. FDV Asia, again, a real focus on making sure that the businesses were really strong. They consolidated market leadership and are now very focused on growth as we head into Q3 and of course, H2.
I'll talk to you in a little more detail about those couple of regions as we get further on. Big emphasis for us was, you know, over the past half year and really the back half of last year as well, is to make sure that we've really been careful about our operating expenses. We've continued to be very focused on improving the efficiency of our businesses, which of course is, as we see revenue growth improve in Q3, you know, we'll start to see better margins. So this exercise in getting our cost base reduced, really analyzing it carefully across the three regions, and making sure that we have a really optimized operating model.
Again, the idea being that now we're profitable, and now that the three regions are cash flow positive, you have a really good base upon which to grow. You're not, you know, earning AUD 1 and spending AUD 1.50 to get it. We've got our cost base well under control. In fact, reduced it in the half. So as we grow again in Q3, you know, much more of that revenue growth goes to margin. So there's notes here on some of the areas that we've really worked hard to reduce and become more efficient at. You know, if we can produce more revenue, a lower cost base, as I said, of course, helps improve margin over time, and really, the model starts to take hold.
You know, this movement from classifieds into transactions off a lower cost base, more revenue growth coming, and of course, delivering higher margins as we get into Q3 and beyond. So certainly some detail there around some of those cost reduction initiatives in the half. In terms of the EBITDA breakdown, so, you know, obviously the scale on this graph is very friendly, but what it does show is that, you know, we've gone from not quite being profitable now to being profitable. And this is a significant achievement for the business. We've been close, and now we're there, profitably in all three of the regions in which we operate.
Our equity accounted businesses in Pakistan continue to be profitable, even when you add on our corporate costs on a statutory basis, you know, our business is now statutory EBITDA profitable. So that's a significant achievement for the group. It's a significant achievement for each of the individual operating companies as well, in LATAM, MENA and Asia, in that a number of the businesses have taken some time to get to profitability. There's been a lot of work done to get us there. And of course we, you know, look to continue to minimize our overhead corporate costs as well, which we've got a real close eye on. So the picture gets brighter and brighter for us. It's been a pretty tough 12 months, but we now feel we've achieved some real milestones that we've set ourselves around, you know, profitability and cash.
A big focus on revenue growth now that we've got this profitability profile in place. As I said, it's not just one particular company or one particular region holding up others. Across the board, our companies are profitable. Across the board, our three regions are profitable, and of course, on a statutory basis, we've gone past that milestone as well. So, significant achievements in the first half of the year to get this result and, something we've worked very hard to do. As I said, really positions us well now to focus on increasing revenue growth, Q3 into the second half of the year.
Just in, as we dive into the regions a little bit, 360 Latam, which consists of four companies that operate across about a dozen countries, in Latin America, from Central America down to the tip of Chile. Again, these results were in the quarterly, but just to go over them again, you can see that the good, steady revenue growth in a period where we've moved to much stronger profitability profile. So getting the revenue mix right, so still a significant amount of revenue coming out of these businesses that's recurring, which relates to the subscription business, which is the classifieds business. There's significant revenue just in that general media category. The growing piece of this pie chart, of course, is what we're doing around transactions.
You know, that'll help not only grow revenue, but grow margin over time as well. There's some really interesting product initiatives that are being undertaken in 360 Latam, which I wanna walk you through one in particular. And these are about saying, you know, we've now got a really strong base in our classifieds business. As we move toward transactions, what are the sorts of things beyond, you know, trying to take commissions? What are the sorts of products, what are the sorts of initiatives we're rolling out to really help consumers and sellers, agents, property developers, for example? How are we helping them move toward the transaction? So when we talk about transactions, we're not just talking about leaping from selling ads to try to be agents or try to be a middleman and take commissions.
There is a whole ecosystem of opportunities, as people might well be aware, that you can tap into. And you know, we're now starting, having reshaped a lot of these businesses in Latam and getting them to profitability, we're now starting to take much more bigger strides in providing consumers and sellers with products that help them get to the transaction. So it's moving from search and discover on the pathway to ultimately transacting a house, or in some cases a car. And what are the sorts of things that are being undertaken to get us there? And, you know, generally speaking, and again, this is a little bit of a repeat from the quarterly, but you know, a lot of work, clearly, as you would do in these businesses around the marketing strategies.
It's making sure that consumers can click on a site, or click on a product, or click on an ad and get through to the seller and successfully engage. There's a lot more being done around that, you know, process for sellers as well. So a lot more products that we're starting to think about for sellers. And of course, you're doing this in an environment where there's pretty big numbers, you know, searching through these sites. And one of the examples of the products that is being rolled out across LatAm now, and this originated in InfoCasas. It's a product that locally is called IRIS. It kind of works much like an MLS system. So if we look at the opportunity in our LatAm markets, and this is just within the real estate part of the market.
In the markets in which we operate, we think there's about 1.3 million primary real estate transactions conducted in a year. Average sale price times the commission. And you can sort of look at the annual, you know, value of that in terms of the price, and you start to think, well, how do we move our consumers from search and discover through to transactions? And how can we, by virtue of that strategy, capture some more of that transaction revenue that or commission pool that's sitting there? And, you know, an example of one of a number of the products that's currently being rolled out is what we call the IRIS platform.
So this started, as I said, at InfoCasas, and it really taps into a problem where you had. You know, you have property developers that are really acting independently of one another and trying to have their own brand in the market, trying to reach buyers. Really trying to, you know, go direct in some respects. They use all of the platforms, of course, but there was a disconnect, I guess, between them and accessing more brokers. And that kind of leaves you in a situation where consumers feel there's a lack of transparency, there's a lack of information about some of these projects that developers are marketing.
A solution was developed at InfoCasas, and it's now being rolled out across a number of the markets, which is to create effectively an MLS system for developers and developments in the markets in which we operate. So this allows, developers to put their content, to put their projects into a centralized database. It then gives access to brokers who are clients of, of our, of our portals in these Latin American countries and creates a, a very simple intermediary channel.
You know, you might hear this and be saying, "Well, that sounds like a really simple solution." It is, and its simplicity is, I guess, part of its elegance, where you're taking a definitive problem that developers were having in shifting their stock, plugging them into a database, an MLS-style system or a platform we call IRIS, which allows brokers to then go in, access their inventory and sell more of their inventory on behalf of the developer. So this solves not only a problem for the developer, but it also demonstrates the market power you have as a market leader.
When you're in one of these markets where you effectively have all the developers as customers, you have all the brokers as customers, and you, rather than, you know, stand by and wonder what to do, we've now created a database, a product, which allows those two groups to connect and access inventory for brokers to sell, and obviously give developers access to more brokers without having to go through a process of, you know, one by one meeting them. And just by way of example, this is a fairly recent product that's been rolled out, but we've got some fairly compelling data from a couple of case studies that we've followed by introducing IRIS.
So this is when, you know, real estate brokers and agents can go to an inventory database, can access the inventory from developers more readily, can communicate with them, and can obviously help developers shift that inventory faster. So there's a project that we tracked in Uruguay, where, you know, we had a developer go five months without a sale. We then plugged their project into this IRIS database, which allowed more brokers to access it, and then brokers go to the consumers. And of course, we saw a much stronger sell-through on that project once they plugged into IRIS. So this is one of the examples of the products that we're rolling out across 360 Latam.
It's an example of what you can do when you have market power, and you can communicate with all of the project developers that are there. You can connect them with brokers and, and of course, generating more sales, and then being able to take a share of that commission. So you're the middleman. So we're not replacing anyone. We're not replacing developers, we're not replacing brokers, and we're certainly there to focus on getting consumers through to the websites. But we've now got a product that allows us to sit between brokers and developers and take a commission on those sales. Clearly, if you're in that position, you can then think about many more products. But this is a really significant step that's being undertaken in our LatAm business today.
And it's being rolled out over the next number of months into Q3 and early next year into other markets. So it already exists in a couple of our markets there in green, being rolled out to the markets you can see in light blue, dark blue, navy blue, and sky blue. And will ultimately be a really important part of the mix for our LatAm business. And there are other products like this that are all geared around helping consumers, helping brokers and developers in this example, leverage our market position and start to move our customers, our consumers, through to being, you know, much closer to the transaction.
InfoCasas, in this example, being part of that, this will be rolled out to Fincaraíz in Colombia, to Encuentra24 in Central America, to Yapo in Chile, and of course, to our other InfoCasas brand in Peru and potentially Bolivia over the coming months. So that's just a really good example in helping people understand, you know, when you talk about going from classifieds through to transactions, what are you actually doing? You know, and this is just to help build the understanding of the sorts of products that are being rolled out. Just to touch on MENA, too. So MENA, for us, was a period of consolidation. It was about getting the businesses through to profitability.
Avito, which is the largest of our businesses in this MENA Marketplaces Group, and really the bedrock of that group of companies we're trying to develop, had never been profitable in its 10 years of existence. We bought it about 24 months ago, and we've turned a loss to a profitable business. And we're now very much focused on now having stemmed those losses, got it to profitability, got it to cash flow positive, now really focused on growth. And as you can see, just by the makeup of the revenue pie in the middle, lots of opportunity around, again, helping consumers and sellers move from search and discover through to transactions. Half of the revenue is recurring, the other half is largely in media and advertising. Very big opportunity around what we can do with consumers and transactions.
We launched an event back in June, which was around testing our ability to help consumers purchase cars through the website or through the brand. That event generated about 250 car transactions. So we're sort of feel like we've now cracked the code a bit on moving forward on transactions in this part of the world. We've got another event coming up in September, which is focused on the property vertical. Similar model, really to sort of demonstrate that we can help consumers purchase, and we can help sellers transact high-value consumer items through the brand and through the MENA group. Big focus on sustainability at MENA over the last 6-12 months. Now, obviously, we're very, very focused with that strong base in place to get to revenue growth.
And Q3 already looks, you know, much better than our previous quarters, so we're, we're fairly confident that that plan is proceeding as, as we hoped. Q3 looking a lot better, much more solid foundation upon which to grow. And in terms of the sorts of things, somewhat similar to what we're doing in, in 360 Latam. You know, big focus on, on how we drive consumers through the idea of, you know, purchasing houses and cars through the portal or through the, through the portal and into the customer base. So successful event held around cars. Event coming up around property, which is really to crack that code. Much more focused on having efficient marketing, and, and much more data-driven now. But, I guess the big feature of this business was profitability in the first half.
Really now getting to focus on revenue growth with that, that foundation in place, in Q3 and, and, H2. Just to touch on Asia a bit, this obviously is significant, and I'll, I'll sort of talk to Asia in terms of the companies we consolidate and then the associates, which is primarily, a lot of interest in what's happening at Zameen. Without the-- If you just look at the consolidated entities, it actually grew really well for us. There's already a big focus in our Asian businesses on transactions. Our EBITDA on a consolidated basis, so this is ex Pakistan, improved from being unprofitable to profitable. So again, this region ticks the box for us. Some of our smaller businesses are in this region, so we've got to work to do on scale.
But that's a big focus for the team at the moment, and I think most of these results were communicated in our quarterly anyway. So I guess I'll sort of move on and talk to some of the initiatives. Again, not dissimilar from the other regions. Big focus on the technology. A big focus on what we're doing around bringing more consumers through the platforms and ultimately, transactions. And part of the world where we're doing a lot of transaction revenue already, so it's about how we scale transactions. If you think about this in the order of things, Asia, really heavily into transactions. It's all about scale. Latam, half the way through that journey and introducing a lot of really interesting products to help consumers and sellers transact more.
MENA, probably in its infancy around its movement or evolution from classifieds and, and doing transactions, and we've seen some revenue late in Q2, but there'll be more revenue in Q3 around transactions for MENA. But the Asia part of the business, while small in numbers, transaction volume, so that's a big focus for us over the next, couple of quarters. Just in terms of Zameen, we wanted to continue to give people transparency as to, you know, what's the latest. And the latest is that, you know, we're starting to see signs of recovery. We're not predicting anything. We're not forecasting anything. But what we are saying is that the last three months have been better than the previous six in terms of trajectory. So you can see that things got pretty tough in Pakistan into May and June.
There was a lot of, you know, public information around the IMF loan, which is now in place. And what we have seen throughout is the operating metrics remain fairly consistent, and start to actually improve. And again, I say we're not forecasting anything, or predicting, or promising anything, but we are just pointing to the data that we have, and that is showing that it appears as though that Zameen is now moving in the right direction. As I said, it was a very tough 6-9 months prior to that, but the conditions domestically have stabilized. They've much more, I guess you can say what you could say would be cautious optimism, but again, there's lots to play out.
But we are pointing to the fact that this business has remained profitable throughout, and you can see by the data that the revenue has started to grow again. And what we'll see in the next few months, you know, we don't know, but simply pointing to the fact that what has happened and, you know, I think the data sort of points to the fact that there's clear improvement in its trajectory. So, you know, we think that it's potentially through the worst. Again, not forecasting anything, but we are pointing to the data that says that the revenue started to grow again over the past few months. The metrics to the side have remained really consistently strong.
So with returning with some consumer confidence returning, we're starting to see more activity through the site and more revenue, and it's remained profitable throughout. So while this business has had some tough times, it is an example of the strength of the business, that it's now recovering. It's a clear market leader, and it's in a big market. So we appreciate the fact that it's had been bruised and battered, but it is very much alive and kicking and very much back to growing its revenue. So we look with interest to the second half of the year. But anyone looking at us would say, "Well, yeah, it certainly appears that Zameen is improving again," which is a positive sign for everyone.
There's additional information in the back of the deck, all of the financials, all of the tables, which people can turn to for themselves. I will point, I guess, just to the EBITDA table, which shows you that all of our businesses, with the consolidation of CarsDB into iMyanmarHouse, have now become profitable. So that's a good sign for us and, you know, we're pretty excited about the next period of time. So, I don't know if... Katrina, we can go to questions on any of the financials now or any of the information that we've shared this morning.
Yeah. Thanks, Shaun. So yeah, again, if you'd like to ask a question, please type it into the chat and click submit. Our first question is: Can you please explain how 360 Latam's new IRIS platform complements the region's marketplace strategy, and what impact do you expect it to have on transaction revenue? Also, are there material costs to expanding the platform into new markets?
So IRIS is really designed to connect developers with brokers. So developers historically shied away from using brokers or would use them sparingly, would use their own sales teams, and that was fertile ground for a portal to come in and say, "Hey, we think there's a gap in your go-to-market. We think there's a gap in your sales strategy. We can fill a large part of that gap by you using our online platform. We can reach consumers. We can help you generate leads. We can help you transact." And that's a big part of the solution, I suppose. You then look to say, well, the ultimate is to help them connect with more brokers who make a living from selling this stuff.
So it really is leveraging your role as the intermediary, and I think that's what we've always spoken about, is moving to becoming an intermediary and putting yourself not just between consumers and sellers, but now, I guess, the triangle of consumers, property developers, and brokers. So it's a very logical space to step into. It's not a very expensive thing to do, because essentially it's a digital product that they use to access via an app. From our perspective, you know, our aim is to take a portion of the commission for transactions that are made through IRIS.
So if property developers are putting their content into IRIS, if we then have brokers who are then going into that database, much like an MLS, finding properties that their buyers want to purchase, and our role is to take a share of that commission. So to roll that out is a big part of the plan for the second half of the year, and it really just. It's ideal is to put you front center in the transaction more and more. So again, we're not trying to do the transaction. What we are trying to do is facilitate it using the market position that we have, the relationships that exist with those customers.
So it's a really exciting step in saying, well, when you talk about going from search and discover through to transactions, what, what does that mean exactly? And this is an example of one of the products that you can put to market, which puts you firmly into the transaction more and more.
Thanks, Shaun. The next question is: You've noted a number of cost optimization activities over the last 12 months. Is there more that can be done, or are you happy with the cost base?
Happy with the cost base? We're never quite happy with the cost base. Oh, look, there's absolutely more that we think can be done, and the way to think about it is, if left to, you know, natural trajectory, there's always an accepted norm that, you know, your costs will increase, you know, year to year, and that's probably fair if you've got inflation and a few other things. But I think our goal is to reduce them. And we've found, you know, lots of opportunities to do that, over the last 12 months, particularly in some of the businesses we acquired from Adevinta, that there was still opportunities to trim costs. And the other way to think about it is, you know, can you do things cheaper in one market to another?
The beauty of LATAM now is because we've got sort of one grouping of the companies, you know, we've taken some roles that were existing in countries that were slightly higher cost, and we've put them into countries that are lower cost. You know, Venezuela, for example, is a country in which we have a call center. We don't have a business in Venezuela, but the price of labor there is much less. So we've moved our call center and some of the things we were doing in Chile and Colombia, for example, into Venezuela. So there's ways and means that you can continue to look at costs, and it's a very big focus for us.
But, you know, our focus clearly is revenue growth, and that's what we're back to achieving in Q3 on the basis of the numbers we already have. So yeah, I'd like to think we can still reduce costs, but it's. You've just got to be, you know, innovative and creative about how you do it.
Thanks, Shaun. The next question is: When you reach some kind of steady state maturity in LATAM, what EBITDA margin do you consider reasonable?
Well, some of the businesses were sort of getting into the 20s now, and we, our aspiration is around a 40% margin. And if you look at the EBITDA trajectory of the businesses, and you could actually I mean, this is probably a good job for this firm to do, would be to pick out the margins and just chart them for people's benefit. But, you know, some of our businesses are already heading very much in that direction, and that's what we'd love to get to. And I think, you know, it, it's realistic, but it's work. And we've had... You know, the past 12 months have been hard, but it did give us an opportunity to really look at costs more forensically, and we've done that. We'll continue to do that.
If you can then get back to a reasonable revenue growth rate, then the margin, that's where margin lives, and that's very much on our radar.
Thanks, Shaun. The next question is, Zameen has around 17 times the audience of its nearest competitor. Can you speak to the LatAm market in terms of FDV offerings position in relation to the nearest competitor?
Yeah. So InfoCasas is, are number one in their markets. They're, they're not huge markets, so they don't tend to have much competition anyway. So they're clearly a leader. Fincaraíz is number one in Colombia. There is a competitor-- There, that's more competitive. There's 50 million people. There'd be three or four competitors. You're probably about 30% bigger than the number two. E24, again, it's across multiple markets and has varying competitive positions, but again, relatively small markets, so there's not a lot of competition beneath them. There's a bit in Panama, a bit in Costa Rica. Panama, there's a little bit in houses, not so much in cars. Costa Rica, there's a bit more competition in cars, not so much houses, but they're a leader. So then Yapo with Chile. So, so it's, it's a leading horizontal platform.
If you pull apart the verticals and look at houses and cars, they've actually got more traffic, more content. So you could, you could mount an argument there that they're number one in the verticals, but it's very much a horizontal play, and you're playing with a whole lot of traffic. Products like IRIS, which is being rolled out in Chile, will make a difference, but they're all in strong competitive positions. So we're not coming at the market with one arm tied behind our back. And I think the events of the last 12 months have certainly made it, you know, really clear to everyone the value of market leadership. And that continues to be something that you want to absolutely have.
If you had nothing else in this model, you know, market leadership is what I would take every day of the week, and we have that, so it really becomes an execution issue. And if you can keep one eye on your competitors without being too myopic, you know, that's not a bad strategy. But, yeah, the value of incumbents is pretty important.
Thanks, Shaun. The next one is: Where does Mercado Libre sit across each LatAm market?
Oh, varying. I mean, so they're in some, not all, but most of the markets. They shifted to really more like an Amazon model some time back. So that was fine with us. They kind of left open, I guess, the part of the market that we operate in, which is classifieds. But I would say their bigger competitor is like an Amazon product, not so much in the classified space. So yeah, we have other competitors who are more relevant, let's say, than that.
The next question is: What steps need to take place for MENA to achieve meaningful transactions?
It's a combination of. Transactions work well when you get a few various factors come together. So it's market leadership, it's clearly dominant in the verticals, and it's a market that's probably evolving and ready for the model. And that's not always the case in every market you're in. So it's only been recently, as recently as June, that we've really cracked the code on demonstrating that a portal can do transactions for cars. So we were able to help do about 250 automotive transactions in June. So that was kind of proof of concept that, yes, it works, and it's like saying, "Well, how do you now commoditize that? How do you scale that?
How do you get it out to more of your customers?" And that's an execution question. So strategically, we've proven that we can sell cars through the portal. The next one is really property, and that's the one you want to get to. It's high value, it's good margin, and it's where you can make money. So that's happening sort of in about two weeks. So we have a similar strategy process rollout, which we're doing for property in September. So that'll demonstrate, we believe, much like we did with automotive, an ability to transact property through the portal or via the brand. And then again, you look at scale and sustainability, which will be the steps in probably Q4.
So we have. You know, we've, we've been looking at transactions in MENA for a while, and we had a few false starts last year. We probably learned a bit, then the market got a bit tougher, sort of, sat that through and returned to the task in June with automotive, returned to the task in September with property. So we're really interested to see how that property piece goes. And then you can basically pick up that model and drop it into the other market in the region with a business like Tayara, for example. So it's going to be really interesting to watch the Q3 sort of outcome of the trial that we're running with property transactions.
But we're-- Would you say we're quietly confident or you know, cautiously optimistic on all of the early signs. But it was really I think so. If we tried to go back to transactions, say, you know, toward the end of last year, early this year, it's probably just too much uncertainty in the market to do something like that. So as I said, we sort of bide our time a little bit. One eye always on the long game, which is getting transaction volumes and revenues into the businesses. And that's happened with automotive in June, and will happen with property in September.
Thanks, Shaun. How should investors be thinking about the second half of 2023 in terms of growth and bottom line performance?
Well, they've every right to expect it to be better, and it you know, on the, in the early data, it is. So, you know, Q3's looking better than we've had Q1 and Q2. And I would say anecdotally that the mood, the environment, the economics are people are more optimistic probably now than they were six months ago. That's for sure. And that's reflected in businesses that are largely consumer driven, like ours. You know, the metrics we track, which are, if you look at the people coming to your site, what they're doing, the leads they're generating, the volume of ads, that's remained relatively good throughout. We just haven't seen the commercial activity on the end of it, which we're now starting to see pick up a little bit. So that's very positive for us.
As I said, I think that what it has demonstrated for us is just the robustness of the underlying model, which is still that core classifieds, the variable being moved to transactions, but that's a long-term play, and we think this is highly valuable. And then, of course, doing it from market leadership. And, you know, when you roll all of those three things up and you look forward, I think the sky's a lot bluer today than it was when I sat here 12 months ago. And those are some of the things you can't predict, but we feel a lot better about what's happening in this early part of the second half of the year.
Thanks, Shaun. There are no further questions at this time, so I'll now hand back over for closing remarks.
Once again, just thank everyone for dialing in and appreciating the work that's been done across our group. Each region growing, each region profitable, each region cash flow positive, and, you know, more blue sky being seen now than perhaps this time last year. So, you know, we feel pretty good. Obviously, our stock price has been whacked. We think that's pretty harsh, given the metrics that the businesses are producing and the financials as well. So we're looking forward to a much more enjoyable second half of the year.
Thank you. That concludes our conference for today. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.