Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the REA Group Limited Full Year Results 2021 Conference Call. All participants are in a listen only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Graham Curtin, General Manager of Group Reporting. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and welcome, everyone. My name is Graeme Curtin, General Manager of Group Reporting, and I'd like to thank you Before we commence, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we are hosting our meeting in The Wurundjeri people of Kulin nation and pay our respects to the elders past and present. The agenda for this morning is Firstly, hear from Aurier's CEO, Owen Wilson, regarding our overarching financial performance and business highlights for FY 2021. Our CFO, Janelle Hopkins will then talk to Aurier's financial results in detail. Following this, as always, We'll be happy to take your questions.
With that, I'll hand over to Owen to get us started.
Thanks, Graeme, and welcome to everyone joining us today. The 2021 financial year has been a defining period for REA. Through a year that saw extraordinary disruption, the business has accelerated our growth ambitions and delivered exceptional financial results. Looking at our results from cooperations for the year, Revenue was $928,000,000 an increase of 13%. EBITDA after share of associates was $565,000,000 an increase of 19% and NPAT was $318,000,000 an increase of 18%.
Pleasingly, we also maintained our strong core EBITDA margin at 60%. The Board has determined to Full year dividend of $0.01 per share fully franked, a 19% increase on the prior corresponding period. As you can see on this slide, alongside our strong financial results, REA delivered a number of significant milestones. I'm very proud of our team's ability to respond to the changing needs of our customers and consumers during the pandemic, while also accelerating Our growth strategy through a number of pivotal investments. We'll cover these achievements in more detail throughout the presentation.
REA has continued to make great strides in the delivery of our strategy during FY 2021. This included new record audience levels The unveiling of new products and solutions to drive more leads to our customers. In India, we acquired a controlling interest in the Lara Technologies, While our transaction with PropertyGuru creates the most compelling PropTech Group in Southeast Asia. And at home, we acquired Mortgage Choice, Building on the strength of our SmartLine Broker business and accelerating our financial services strategy, these investments provide the foundation for sustainable long term growth. Turning to our audience highlights.
Fundamental to our success is having the largest and most engaged audience of property seekers. Realestate.com.au extended its audience leadership position throughout FY 2021. An average of 121,000,000 visits were received each month, up 35% year on year or 3.3 times more visits than the nearest competitor. Of the 12,600,000 people who visit realestate.com.au each month on average, $6,400,000 are exclusive to our site. Our app remains Australia's number one property app With an average of 55,000,000 launches each month, up 49% year on year.
When compared to the other leading digital brands, realestate.com.au is now Australia's 8th largest in terms of audience, Reaching over 60% of the adult population. This shows that our brand has become part of the everyday lives of so many Australians. Turning to our consumer highlights for the year. Our goal is to convert Australia's largest audience of property seekers into realestate.com.au members. By delivering valuable insights and experiences powered by our unique property data, Our membership base grew 31% year on year.
Our member profiles enable us to deliver targeted Personalized experiences providing consumers with the right information at the right time based on their activity on the site. This in turn increases consumer engagement, Which is evidenced by a 20% increase in members who are active on our site. The strength of our relationship with consumers is also demonstrated by 50 2% year on year increase in properties being tracked by homeowners, while the total numbers of property tracked being tracked also grew significantly, up 62% year on year. The launch of our property owner dashboard is just one example of the new features we're bringing to empower consumers throughout their property journey. This experience launched in December allows homeowners to monitor their market and make confident choices When selling, renting, renovating or financing.
Importantly, it also serves as a powerful way for buyers and sellers to connect with agents and agencies. 24% of owners visiting the dashboard have become a seller, refinance or landlord prospects since launch, while the volume of leads delivered has increased 71%. Turning to our customers. This year we launched new products and features and offered numerous support measures to help our customers overcome the challenges associated with prolonged lockdowns. Our deep collaboration with our customers saw REA receive our Highest ever customer sentiment rating, something we're exceptionally proud of.
Our agency marketplace is a leading destination to connect vendors with the most suitable agency and agent to sell their property. During the year, we saw 1,800,000 average monthly visits to the Find Agent section, up 17% year on year. We also saw a 67% year on year increase in seller lead volumes, Connecting more customers with prospective vendors. Our suite of digital agency services helps our customers grow their business and win their next listing. Partnering with RealTear, we launched our new Connect subscription.
Connect provides our customers with products across Every stage of the prospecting journey to help attract, nurture and convert seller leads. Each component of our Connect product is easily accessed through our Ignite self-service platform, which had a strong usage during the year. While still early days, there have been over 10,000 pitches to vendors using Connect Since it launched. When it comes to REA's advertising solutions, our FY 2021 results reflect a superior value being delivered to our customers and their vendors. Premier continued to outperform with record penetration and we saw record sign up to our new residential debt contract in Q4.
Add on products also experienced strong growth with uptake of audience maximizer campaigns increasing 126% year on year. As I mentioned earlier, 2021 was a defining year for REA Group. We made a number of pivotal investments to accelerate key areas of our strategy. I'll cover off the larger of these in the coming slides. In December, we moved to a controlling position in Allara Technologies, which operates the Indian websites housing.com, macan.comandproctiger.com.
Throughout the year, Allara achieved a number of key milestones despite the significant impacts of COVID in India. On this slide, you can see that our flagship site, housing.com, made excellent inroads in the battle for market leadership. Site visits increased 92% year on year and we also saw a phenomenal growth in app usage up a staggering 242%. This trend corresponds with the rapid digitization of India's real estate market, which presents exciting opportunities. In January, Housing Edge was launched on housing.com as part of the focus to create a seamless consumer property experience.
Housing Edge Digitizes multiple services for homeowners and tenants, including rent agreements, tenant verification and home loan options, all designed to make the process of moving home as simple as possible. 6 new native language search were launched on housing.com. This means we're now able to attract new users and reach more of India's population. While we're early in our journey in India, the progress this year points to an exciting future. Moving on to Financial Services.
As you can see on this slide, we had an outstanding year in terms of broker recruitment, submissions and settlements. Janelle will talk to these results in more detail. We also launched new features to provide a highly personalized home loan experience. These features such as our loan tracker are receiving positive consumer engagement and driving more qualified, higher value mortgage leads. Building on the strong foundation of our Financial Services business, the acquisition of Mortgage Choice has accelerated our strategy.
Bringing Mortgage Choice together with our SmartLine Broker business gives us the opportunity to be the leading mortgage broker business in Australia. The combined business has a significant national broker footprint and a 5% market share of the $400,000,000,000 annual high loan market. Our investment in Simpology will help us provide consumers with choice and simplicity when navigating their home loan options. We will also deliver productivity improvements to our broker network through higher quality loan submissions resulting in less rework, faster learn approval times and streamlined business operations. We see considerable growth opportunities through the combination of our larger broker network, REA's digital expertise, Our high intent property seeker and owner audience and our unique data and insights.
Core to our financial services offering is delivering a multichannel proposition that can deliver great rates and choice coupled with ease and great service. It's a winning proposition. Today, 60% of mortgages go through brokers who offer invaluable advice to Australians navigating the complexity of financing their properties. At the same time, 40% of people are comfortable undertaking the mortgage process on their own. Our strategy is focused on servicing 100 percent of the market.
This year, REA completed the transaction to combine our this week, I should say, it is this year as well. REA completed the transaction to combine our Malaysia and Thailand With PropertyGuru. In exchange, REA now has an 18% interest in this larger, more diversified company and takes one seat on the Board. I'm delighted to be joining the PG Board later this year. Prior to this transaction, REA also divested its stake in 99 Group.
Southeast Asia is one of the fastest growing regions globally, predicted to become the 4th largest economy by 2,030. COVID has bought a permanent and massive spike in digital adoption across the real estate sector. 70% of the region's population is now online. PropertyGuru now holds the number one position in 4 of Southeast Asia's 5 key markets and is perfectly positioned to propel the next wave of Proptech Innovation across the region. Another exciting development for PropertyGuru was its recent announcement regarding its intention to pursue a listing on the New York Stock Exchange, Another big step in the company's evolution.
REA's current momentum, Coupled with our strategic investments and exciting product roadmap, create an excellent platform to deliver on our ambitious plans across all of our markets to drive future growth. Our core business has never been stronger, and we will continue to focus on attracting audiences that are actively engaged through the delivery of highly compelling personalized experiences. The last 12 months have fast tracked our customers' appetite for digital solutions. We'll continue to roll out and cement new offerings like Connect to help our customers drive their businesses to new levels. Leveraging our unique data and insights, we will grow our PropTech business as a trusted leader in property data and valuations products.
PropTrack delivered a record result this year and is set for strong growth in FY 2022. The continued growth of our core business is balanced with Next Generation Marketplaces, extending our ability to offer truly differentiated experiences for buyers, sellers, renters and owners. There's still so much to do in Financial Services and we have an ambitious longer term goal to originate 1 in 10 home loans in Australia. And finally, in India, We will continue to invest to become the undisputed number 1 digital real estate business in one of the largest growth markets in the world. Alongside our growth agenda is our commitment to a more equitable and sustainable future through responsible business practices.
REA made great progress in our environmental, social and governance targets during the year, becoming a certified cover neutral business. And in a world where the competition for talent is as fierce as it's ever been, REA was recognized as Australia's 4th best workplace by Great Place TO Work. Finally, before I hand over to Janelle, a few comments regarding current market conditions. Australia's property market has shown amazing resilience over the past year. While most of the country has experienced lockdowns at various stages, We've seen how positively the market responds once restrictions are lifted.
The lockdown in Sydney is having an impact on listing volumes, Which were down 22% in July and there are predictions this lockdown will be protracted. If this is correct, it will have some impact on our Q1 and H1 results. While the winter months are typically slower months for property, we continue to see audience growth coupled with strong buyer demand. Buyer inquiries were up 40% year on year in July. While COVID creates some uncertainty over the economic outlook, most indicators point to the continued underlying strength of the property market.
This gives us confidence that the impact of lockdowns will be temporary and the momentum we had at the end of FY 2021 will continue into FY20 I'll now hand over to Janelle to talk through our financial results in more detail.
Thanks, Owen, and good morning, everyone. REA has delivered an exceptional result with Australian residential market conditions significantly improving during the year. We have provided both group core results in the ASX release for FY 2021 and growth rates excluding the Alara acquisition to give visibility of like for like performance. Revenue for the year increased 13% to 928,000,000 Operating expenses from core operations increased 13% to $372,000,000 and the group delivered EBITDA including the results from our associates of $565,000,000 up 19%. Excluding the impact of the Alara acquisition, Group revenue increased 11% and EBITDA including associates increased 21%.
NPAT from core operations was $318,000,000 up 18%. Note that NPAT results Corporations differ from reported statutory NPAT with a number of 1 off items excluded. These are set out in the reconciliation table on Slide 32. Our reported effective tax rate was 33%, which reflects the consolidation of Alara's losses, which are not tax affected. We expect this treatment to continue over the medium term.
We will now turn to trends in the Australian market. On this slide, we've set out the quarterly changes in buy and rent listing volumes and develop our dwelling commencements. As you can see, After a very challenging start to FY 2021, which saw 1st quarter Melbourne buy listings down 41% due to strict COVID lockdowns and Flat national listings, the market recovered quickly throughout the remainder of the year. A particularly strong 4th quarter saw the year finish with national listings growth of 15% with Sydney up 25% and Melbourne increasing 11%. We saw positive buying conditions as a result of low interest rates and access to credit throughout the year, assisting the residential market rebound.
The chart showing rent listings highlights that this market remains challenged. Listings were down 9% in FY 2021, impacted by a continuing lack of migration, The absence of international students and moratoriums on tenant evictions during the year. Moving to the developer market. Project launches grew 17% in FY 2021 with the growth skewed towards smaller lower yielding development launches assisted by government stimulus as part of the homebuilder scheme. The developer market is expected to stabilize in the next 12 months with Biz Oxford upgrading its forecast for new dwelling commencements from minus 7% to flat year on year.
On the next slide, we have set out the key drivers of EBITDA growth during the year, which highlights the strength of the performance of the Australian Residential Business. Residential revenues increased by 18%, reflecting the higher national listings, improved depth in premier penetration and strong growth in add on products. Turning to Commercial and Developer, we saw a return to growth during the year with revenues up 5%. Developer revenues were positively impacted by new project commencement and an increase in project profile duration. This was partly offset by a decline in commercial revenue, which was negatively impacted by COVID related Listings declined.
Media, data and other revenues were broadly flat year on year with growth in data and media offset by a reduction in other revenue in flatmates.com.au, consistent with listing trends experienced in our rentals business. Financial Services operating revenue increased 9%, benefiting from a record 23% growth in settlements, an impressive 26% increase in broker recruitment and improved productivity. The growth Operating revenue was more than offset by the reduction in partnership revenue as the current NAB agreement performance payments reached maturity in September 2020. With the Mortgage Choice acquisition now complete, earnings will be consolidated and included in the Financial Services segment going forward. We have provided a FY 2021 pro form a summary of the combined financial services results in the supplementary information section of the presentation on Slide 34.
As we provide each reporting period, the following slide shows both the penetration and mix of stepped listings in the residential business and the success of our premium listings products. There is no scale on this graph, but the relativities between the categories are to scale. After being negatively impacted during the first half by lockdowns in Melbourne, debt penetration returned to growth in the second half with improvements across all major states. Pleasingly, we saw a continued increase in Premier penetration demonstrating the superior returns our products provides to agents and vendors. With the record sign up to the new depth contracts in the 4th quarter, This should result in the continued trend of growth in Premier.
Of course, as we saw in the first half of FY 'twenty one, Lockdowns in the major cities do cause a temporary reduction in Premier penetration. We will continue to target incremental growth in overall penetration. Moving to our international businesses. Our U. S.
Business Move reported a strong performance with continued growth in realtor.com's audience. Average monthly unique users increased by 32% year on year in Q4. Moov's reported revenue increased by an impressive 36% in FY 'twenty one to US641 million driven by continued strength in both the referral model and the traditional lead generation products. The traditional lead gen product continued to see a strong increase in demand driving improvements in sell through, yield and retention, while the referral model benefited from an increase in average home values and transaction volumes. The growth in Move during the year has resulted in a pleasing turnaround, improving from a $7,000,000 equity accounted loss in the prior year to a $16,000,000 gain in FY 2021.
Now turning to India. In December, We completed the move to a controlling position in Alara Technologies. Our shareholding as of today is 65%, with News Corp. Holding 34% of the remaining minority interest in Alara. Since acquisition, Alara has continued to demonstrate significant audience and market share growth in India.
And against the backdrop of a market heavily impacted by COVID, Alara has delivered an impressive 23% year on year increase in local currency In terms of contributions, the group results included an equity accounted loss 2,400,000 in Alara in the first half and Alara was consolidated from 1 January 2021, contributing revenue of $17,000,000 and an $18,000,000 EBITDA loss. Our Asia business performance was negatively impacted by COVID, with revenues declining 16%. This was driven by significant extended lockdowns and cancellation of events across all markets. EBITDA before associates and joint ventures was $10,000,000 with revenue declines partially offset by focused cost management across the region. Earlier this week, the group announced the transfer of the Malaysia and Thailand entities to PropertyGuru in an exchange for 18% In addition, the group divested its investment in 99 Group.
The combined transactions are expected to result in an overall net gain of approximately $12,000,000 Last month PropertyGuru announced plans The list on the New York Stock Exchange, REA has committed to subscribe for US52 $1,000,000 of equity in the listed entity, with that transaction expected to complete in Q2 or Q3 of FY 2022. Following the capital raise, REA expects to hold a 15.8% stake in the listed entity. On the next slide are our core operating jaws. Our jaws remained open for the full year excluding acquisitions with the revenue growth of 11% and operating cost growth contained to 3%. As you can see from the chart on this page, Cost growth was largely driven by an increase in employee costs with higher headcount, salary increases and higher incentives linked to strong financial results.
This was partly offset by lower marketing spend, particularly during the first half. The group continues to invest to support ongoing growth with investment focused on consumer experiences and new product delivery. During the year, we increased the pace of our investment program as market conditions improved. Depreciation and amortization is expected to increase in FY 2022 as a result of acquired assets. Total D and A is expected to increase from $83,000,000 in FY 2021 to $90,000,000 to $96,000,000 in FY22.
Turning to our cash position. We ended the year with strong closing cash position of $169,000,000 The group delivered operating Cash flows of $321,000,000 for the year, which is the addition of the first four bars on the graph. Our operating cash flow was reduced by higher tax payments as a result of the FY 2020 COVID payment deferrals paid in FY 2021. Free cash flow excluding acquisitions of $286,000,000 was generated with $315,000,000 of expenditure on strategic investments, including Mortgage Choice and Alara. During the year, we repaid the $70,000,000 NAV loan on maturity and replaced the $170,000,000 syndicated facility with a $520,000,000 bridge facility, which was used to fund the Mortgage Choice acquisition.
At 30 June, dollars 414,000,000 was drawn on the facility, which matures in July 2022. We expect to refinance this in Q1 FY 2022 with a new syndicated facility. Finally, on current trading. COVID continues to cause market volatility globally and has the potential to impact the group's performance in FY 2022 both in Australia and offshore. Despite COVID related volatility, Market dynamics remain positive with strong levels of buyer inquiries underpinned by low interest rates and healthy bank liquidity.
The Australian Residential business will benefit from price increases, which came into effect from 1 July 2021. As a reminder, 2 year premier oil contracts will see an average 8% price increase nationally in 2022 and 6% in 2023. Listings volumes in July decreased 3% year on year. Melbourne listings were up 3%, while Sydney listings were down While the India market remains volatile due to ongoing COVID impacts, we will continue to invest throughout FY 'twenty two to drive further audience and revenue growth. We continue to target positive operating jaws in FY 2022, excluding the impact Consolidating Alara, while increasing the level of investment to deliver our strategic initiatives.
As we have demonstrated over the past We have the ability to navigate successfully through challenging market conditions. The strength of our balance sheet has enabled us to execute on significant transactions and invest in our core business supporting future growth. I'll stop here. Operator, can we please open the line for questions?
Thank Your first question comes from Eric Choi from Barrene Jolly. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Well done and good to be chatting to you again. Just the first question on the Q4 revenue run rate. Backsolving, it looks like residential debt growth might have been pretty close to that 54% Listings growth. So just wondering if that means sort of debt and deferral in aggregate were close to 0 in that 4th quarter.
Just keen to unpick some of those 4th quarter drivers. 2nd question just on costs. I guess the feedback we're getting is we're seeing rising labor costs, Especially in the tech sector and REA has always been a great place to work. So just wondering if you can give us a sense of what your underlying cost inflators are FY 2022 even before some of the reinvestment you've talked about and before, I guess, your discretionary costs? And then just a third question on PropTrack.
I think you called out several new contract wins in the previous result. Is that the key driver of FY 2022 growth? And I'm just wondering if any of these wins have been amongst the sort of Tier 1 financial providers? Thanks.
Welcome back, Eric. I'll take 1 and 3. We're concerned with Q4 Premier penetration, listings were up, but the graph that we show you is as a percentage of listings. So the actual Percentage of listings that were premier was higher. So that is showing a real underlying increase in-depth penetration.
And as we said, we got record sign up in Q4 for our new contract that starts in 1 July. So we expect that sort of trend to continue. The result will be that there is A healthy deferral from Q4 into Q1 as a result of that increased Premier penetration. In terms of PropTrack, you're right. We did previously mention that we had some very pleasing contract wins and you will see the full year impact of those Going into FY 2022, I won't disclose who they're with.
I mean they are with one of the larger lenders and so that is going to underpin Very healthy FY 2022 for Proptrac. I'll let Janelle take the cost question.
Yes. Thanks, Eric. And again, welcome back. So to your question around cost growth, you're right. We are in a war for talent at the moment.
And if you recall last year, we deferred our Salary increases from July to 1 December. So we did do salary increases in 1 December. We've also done salary increases from 1 July this year. So Going through into 2022, there'll be the double impact of a full year of 2022 plus half year of 2021 going forward. I mean, clearly, our salaries It's the biggest line item within our cost base and probably the biggest variable cost that goes up and down.
Look, We're really pleased with the recruitment we're getting. We are growing our business. Not sure if you saw, we came out as the 4th in the Great Places to Work survey that just came out this week. So we're confident about being able to grow our recruitment and continue to manage
Thank you. Your next question comes from Kane Hannan from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Just 3 for me as well, please. I suppose just picking on the audience to maximize on revenues, I know you've also been talking to growth rates. But just when we think about the FY 'twenty two jaws and I suppose some of the revenue and OpEx contributions coming through from that product, Just give us a bit more of a steer around the I suppose it's a quantum of what came through in FY 2021. Secondly, just in terms of Alara and obviously, some very strong numbers in those slides.
Just talk about your willingness to invest in that business in FY 2022. So the way we should be thinking about those losses increasing given that revenue trajectory? And then thirdly, just on the finance business, So your pro form a number is 5% market share, dollars 25,000,000 pro form a EBITDA. So if you hit those 10% market shares you're talking about, Should we be thinking about $50,000,000 of EBITDA? Or so where do you think those earnings can get to as that business scales up and you hit those sorts of targets?
So I might start on Audience Maximizer. Clearly, we have been really pleased with the strength of that product. The Sales team took to market a tactical offer back in December, which we called our ultimate marketing package, which included audience maximizer and a free e brochure, which recorded There is obviously revenue growth associated with it, but there is also a COGS associated with our audience maximizer product. It is a very healthy margin. We don't disclose obviously the quantum of the size of that audience maximizer product, but it is a positive.
And with the market if the market continues to grow the way we've seen it
I'll take the other 2, Kane. We've made it clear in Allara, It's a battle for number 1 in India and we are going to continue to invest until we are the clear number 1. That said, You saw 23% revenue growth in a year that was decimated by COVID. I mean, we all saw what happened in India. It was an awful Situation and yet they still delivered 23% growth.
If COVID sort of normalizes, we will have, I think quite healthy revenue growth that will fund that investment. And so we don't expect that loss number to swing around markedly in India in the short term. In terms of the 10% ambition, that is a multiyear target. So let's be really clear about that. That's not going to happen in the next Few months.
In terms of the impact on EBITDA, look, there'll be a lot of things that influence it. The investment in Simpology, we believe will help increase our broker Productivity. We think our increased scale will give us a bigger seat of the table in negotiating things like our white label products, for example, and therefore that might change the profitability. So we think overall 1 plus 1 will equal more than 2 when you get to those sorts of scale numbers. So There's just so many scale benefits across marketing, across systems, across risk, across compliance, etcetera.
So it's a very exciting ambition to go for.
Cheers, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Lucy Huang from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Owen, and good morning, Janelle. I've just got 3 questions as well. So firstly, your debt penetration has stepped In
the second half, I just wonder if you
can give us some color as to which region, either by city or area, where you've actually seen that penetration pick up Steen, secondly, in terms of Allara, I just noticed the site visits chart, and it looks like Allara's site visits have improved quite significantly versus peers. So I wonder if you can talk through what were some of the initiatives or investments that you did that drove that higher Over the last 3 months. And then just lastly, you mentioned that Agency Marketplace, you're seeing average 1,800,000 monthly visits. Just wondering if
you can give us a
sense as to what proportion of that is generating intercella leads that you're providing to agents. If you can give us some color around that, will be great as well.
Thanks. Thanks, Lizzie. Well, I might start on the STEP penetration. And clearly, as we saw in the first half versus second half from that graph, The impact of the Melbourne lockdown had a substantial impact on the downside, but the Melbourne and Sydney strength in the second half has also had a substantial impact on the upside In the second half, we've seen penetration up across all of our states and Premier penetration up as well. So I wouldn't say it's one specific state that's doing better than the others.
But the benefit we've seen, particularly in that strength in Sydney And Melbourne Metro in the second half is support that result.
In terms of Alara, look, it was a really pleasing I mean, we made great inroads. We had 92% growth in audience. It's a combination of a bunch of things, Lucy. It's We did continue to invest right through the year regardless of what was happening with COVID in India. The other thing that we're I think we're doing really well at in India is SEO.
And that is one of our strengths in this market. We Punch above our weight in SEO, and we're bringing a lot of those skills into the Indian market. I think the third thing that's hard to Put a number on in terms of audience. It's just fantastic developments in the side of the new products that we bring. So the brand is getting more well known.
And when consumers are coming to try it, they like what they see. So it's a combination of all of those things and we'll continue to invest in that. In terms of the 1,800,000 To the seller section, we're not we don't quote the number of leads that we get off that yet, maybe one day. So I'll pass on that one.
No problem. I thought it was worth a try. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Lucy.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tom Beadle from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I just had 2, please. I guess, first, just with the lockdowns. I guess, Are you providing any support to your customers?
Or if not, is there a threshold that you might consider doing this? And then the second question is just around PropertyGuru. What are your intentions here? So will you take an active role in helping run and grow the business? Or are you Passive shareholder.
And do you see yourselves as a long term shareholder in this business or might you look to sell? Thanks.
Thanks, Tom. Look, in terms of lockdowns, we are providing support. We announced quite a while ago when it's pretty apparent that Sydney was going to be in lockdown for a while. We've announced some various support measures for our customers. The primary one there being a 50% Reduction in the subscription cost for July.
We've now extended that into August. That has It costs us about $1,000,000 a month, plus we're also providing a lot of support around their listings, the ability to relist and re upgrade as well. We're there for our customers and if the lockdown continues, we will look at additional support measures. In terms of PropGuru, As I said, look, Asia is a key market and always has been for us. And we bought the opportunity to join together with Prop Gurud to create The clear number 1 in 4 very key markets.
We now get a stake in Vietnam where we weren't even there before and their business there is fantastic. In terms of active versus passive, I'll be joining the Board later this year. So hopefully have an influence on their strategy and their way forward. But as we showed with Alara, we won't just limit it to Board involvement. We want this business to grow.
We are in it for the long term. Let me be really clear about that. And so we will find various ways to add value commensurate with our shareholding.
Okay, great. Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Darren Lung from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Just two quick ones for me. One just on listing volumes, obviously, a bit of color around July, But any indication as to what the rest of the year looks like and or any thoughts or updated comments on The stamp duty change or potential stamp duty change? And then the second one is, there's obviously a lot of inactivity happening sort of Across the market and across particularly in the tech space, any appetite in terms of how you think about your balance sheet in the next 12 months.
Thanks, Darren. Look, listing volumes, it's going to be it's almost going to be FY 2021, but Almost in reverse. I think you're going to see some wild swings across the year. If you look at what we're going to cycle against, so This half, we'll cycle across the Melbourne lockdown of last year. So you'll see particularly in August, September some highly inflated listing numbers for Melbourne.
But now we've got the Sydney lockdown, which is having the exact opposite impact. And so they're probably going to offset each other and pay potentially the Sydney lockdown. I hope it's not longer, but it could be longer. When you cycle into the second half, we're going to be cycling against the strongest listing half We've seen for many, many years. And so you couple that with the fact that we've probably got a federal election in that half and we know We've seen in every single federal election and it has a negative impact on listings.
You could see negative listings in the second half. I mean that's not a wild prediction. So It's going to be a bit of a kind of roller coaster as we cycle against lockdowns. We have further lockdowns, the impact of elections and things like that. I would say a positive hopefully a positive listening environment this year because we're cycling against those really bad comps in Melbourne.
But second half, I'm a bit more sanguine. Balance sheet. Look, we've got a strong balance We've got very low net debt levels. We've got a lot of cash. We've got incredibly supportive bankers.
And so if other opportunities come up, I think our track record in 2021 will show that we've got the appetite and the willingness to do things that are going to accelerate our strategy.
Thanks. And Stamp Duty?
Stamp Duty. Look, it looks like that's going to get in. We're Feeling confident about that one. It won't have an immediate impact. This is a switch.
It's going to be an optionality. What it will do, I think, is change that long term trajectory on listings. If you look at listings over the last decade, there's been kind of that gradual reduction As the things that are an impediment to moving house like stamp duty have increased, we've seen listing volumes Decline kind of year on year for about a decade as a long term trend. I think the removal of stamp duty will reverse that trend. But it will not be a light switch moment.
It'll take time for that to show up.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Entcho Raykovski from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Alan. Good morning, Janelle. I've got a couple. The first one, Alan, you've already touched on, but I was just interested in your perspective on whether the last 6 months represents a more normal listings environment or whether you think it was Boosted by an abnormal level of activity. I mean, you've obviously commented on the expectations when there's a federal election, but just interested in And you're seeing the market when you think we saw something, as I said, slightly unusual over these last 6 months?
And secondly, On PropertyGuru, just if you can talk about the rationale for the additional investment, that extra US52 million dollars You're putting in, in addition to the transaction. I guess, Asia has traditionally been a difficult region To break into, so what gives you confidence? The business or PropertyGuru is well positioned in the region. And just linked to that, I suspect this is not material, but are you able to tell us how much you got from the 99 Group divestment? Thank you.
Yes. Look, on the first one, Encho, it's hard to tell With the last 6 months was a reversion to normal or I would say it's probably stronger than the longer term trends. If you look at The fact that we are the banking system is flushed with liquidity. We've got the lowest interest rates in our history. Consumer confidence came back pretty strongly in that half.
It's now gone in the other direction, but consumer confidence is very strong. I feel like the last 6 months is probably stronger than the normal. And that's why I caution about what might happen In H2 FY 2022 as we cycle over that and particularly with let's hope it's a short election campaign, that's all I'll say. So it's hard to tell, but on balance, it's probably stronger than normal. On PropGuru, why invest more?
We like the story. I mean, I think we've seen that they've done their marketing campaign for therapy raise. It's gone Pretty well. I can't divulge a lot on that, but it's and then why? It's a great team with a great market position In one of the most exciting economies in the world, if you add up the 4 countries that we've got that strong position in.
So It's a really exciting compelling proposition for us and it made absolute sense for us to do this. That's why we've taken a little bit more. In terms of 99 Group, we're not disclosing the details of that. They are commercially sensitive. You can see the net result.
It's not a significant Factor in our numbers.
Okay. That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Roger Samuel from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
I've got two questions as well. First one just on your cost. Previously, you've been able to manage your cost pretty well By flexing your cost base in the downturn, but how are you going to manage the cost in FY 'twenty two given your commentary before about listings? Yes, it's going to be a roller coaster ride and second half 'twenty two could be negative. And also In the context of the salary increases that you introduced on the 1st July, so what can you do to flex the cost base in FY 'twenty two?
The second one is just what is your sense around your relative market share compared to your biggest competitor? Thanks.
Okay. I'll take the first one, Roger, around costs. And I think we've always the last few years have shown we can flex our costs up and down. The fact that we do have that variable cost base with our staffing costs, plus we also use an external third party provider for additional software engineering support, we can again flex up and down as we need to. We clearly do have salary costs coming through.
We have flagged the costs will be higher than they were this year. But as we've always said, we intend to have positive open jaws. The size of the open jaws will obviously be returning to more normal size I've opened jaws as you've seen probably prior to 2021. But look, we're very comfortable that we can flex the cost base up and down as we need to, We'll continue to prioritize to deliver the roadmap.
On the ground market share, It's a hard one to measure. If you look at listings, they're pretty comparable, but you've got I think the thing to look at is whether they're paid listings or free listings. So if you look at audience, I would say our market share has probably expanded Over the year, if you look at something like revenue, it's hard to give you an answer on that without seeing the revenue number. But I feel like we're in a pretty strong market
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Fraser McLeish from MSC Marquis. Please go ahead.
Hi, Owen and Janelle. Just yes, 3 from me. Just firstly on that increase in Premier or debt penetration, which obviously a strong result. Do you think that's been helped by just the strong market Conditions and it might be tough to sustain penetration at that level? Or do you think that's a kind of a new base that can be sustained Going forward, that's my first one.
My second one was just on rental revenue. You showed the chart showing rental volumes down, but Would rental revenue still have grown if you include depth? And then my final one, Janelle, just trying to understand how you've accounted for Alara. I thought there would have been like an outside equity interest due to the News Corp holding that would have been a positive number at the NPAT line. I couldn't see that.
So if you could just help us talk us through that, that would be great. Thanks.
I'll take Premier, and I'll let Janelle take the other 2. Market conditions do impact the rate of penetration and then really that's around geographic So as you saw in the first half, the Melbourne lockdowns knocked that premier penetration number around. So Part of it is what you are seeing there is very strong market conditions in Sydney and Melbourne across H2 and particularly Q4. But it's not just market. Our penetration has gone up.
The number of customers who signed up the Premier across the year has gone up. You also get some discretionary purchase of Premier for customers who aren't on things like Premier Roll. That's gone up. I feel like this is a continuing trend if you look at that graph and we've kind of gone back to trend From that sort of anomaly in the first half.
And when you look at rental, you're exactly right, Fraser. We have seen listings down, but So overall, our revenue is slightly up year on year, so offsetting that listings decline. And in Alara, if you do look at our financial statements, You can see the profit has been attributed between non controlling interest and the owners of the parents. So effectively the profit attributable to us And most effectively that's associated with Alara being also shared with News Corp.
So you can see that
in the financial statements.
So can
I just follow-up, so that impact that you reported, did that have that on in your presentation and stuff, did that have the That's outside equity interest in it or do we have to adjust
for that? That's 100%, yes.
That's 100 percent so we should take the equity interest off that to get?
Yes.
Okay, thanks. I'll come back to that offline. Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Paul Mason from E&P. Please go ahead.
Sorry guys, my questions have been Answered already, I tried to exit the queue, but it didn't work. All right. Thanks, Paul.
Your next question comes from Anthony Bourdieu from Morgan Financial Limited. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Hope you can hear me. Just Probably a bit of a different question here. But just if you have a look at recently a little microcap company open negotiation recently listed, I guess it's a model of doing auctions on kind of moving more towards e commerce and doing auctions online. I guess what's stopping you guys from offering kind of on the site and going down that route.
And I guess you've said it in e commerce for auto, but what's long we're talking much longer term, but what's the risk If these models start to get up, that they start to reduce the impact or reduce the necessity for classifieds Advertising there. And then quickly just on Move, just with Realtor doing the deal with Opendoor, I guess, how much of the revenue growth can be attributed to that? And I guess, additionally, they were talking about only single figure Cities that they were, are buying in, I guess, how much has that been expanded to and the potential for that going forward? And then just Thirdly, just the rest of Asia, if you exclude what you've said for Malaysia and Thailand, I guess, it's the rest of Asia is making $25,000,000 revenue and $18,000,000 EBITDA, so 72% margin. How sustainable is that going forward?
In terms of online auction, Anthony, we took the approach during The pandemic impacts last year to effectively integrate with every online auction platform. In that way, we gave our customers absolute choice and we made it as easy as possible for them to convert to online auctions When they had to, and you'll see that this week in Melbourne. It would have been a stack of physical auctions programmed and they'll switch Digital Choice and they can it's all linked in with us. So we don't have any plans to move into that space. I'll take the Asia one.
In terms of the Asia numbers, the primary driver that's my fund. It's a very high margin business. Our customers value that ability to have listings seen by that market and that's the primary driver of that and it is sustainable.
And I think on Opendoor, it's probably worth talking to the Newscorp team in New York around the detail around that one.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Elyse Kennedy from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Hi, Owen and Janelle. Two questions from me. Thank you. So firstly, on debt penetration, where do you see that going forward? And is there optionality to add further levels of debt?
And then the second question I have is around the mortgage market and how you see competition playing out there. Is there potential for further consolidation?
Look on depth, I think that graph that we show and I know there's no scale on it, but it does kind of say it all. We've seen Continuous incremental increases and I think with the contracts signage rate that we had in Q4, you're going to see that Absolutely into FY 2022. In terms of further levels of depth, I don't know there's an appetite with our customers to have like a 4th layer. What you might see is different versions of the same depth tier with different features that have different value and therefore different prices. And That's the sort of thing that you could see going forward, but there's no plans on that, as I sit here today.
In terms of The mortgage market, there has been already a lot of consolidation happening. You've seen other players come together. There are still it's still quite fragmented, absolutely. As we sit here today though, we think we've got the scale we need. We always wanted to get to that We always thought it's around about the 1,000 broker number to have the coverage across the country to spread the costs across a bigger base.
And we're absolutely convinced that we now have probably the most attractive proposition for anyone contemplating becoming a broker to join, Particularly with our audience and the leads that we think we can generate for our brokers. So we foresee some very strong organic growth in our broker numbers going forward.
Thanks, Owen.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Wilson for closing remarks.
Look, thanks everyone for joining us today. Obviously, a lot of interest. I think we had a record number of questions today. We are absolutely delighted with the results we've produced for the full year given the circumstances in which we produce them. Thanks for your time today, and we look forward to updating you again when we release our Q1 results.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.