Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Auto Trader's results presentation for the six months ending 30th of September 2021. It's been some time since we were together in person. It's great to see everyone here today. While the effects of COVID-19 are no longer as visible in our report numbers, there has still been some impact on our business. Cars are selling very quickly, supply is tight, and everyone at Auto Trader is still working between their home and our offices. To be able to publish such strong results in spite of the challenges everyone has had to overcome personally is a credit to all our people. I wanna thank everyone that continues to trust and depend on Auto Trader, including car buyers, customers, shareholders, and most of all, my colleagues.
While these numbers are only for a six-month period, the work behind them goes back to the beginning of the pandemic. I'm proud of our collective efforts and the results it has produced. The foundations of our business are as strong as they have ever been, putting us in the best possible position to support the industry in transitioning to multi-channel retailing enabled by our brand, technology, and data, starting with our strategic review, we've achieved our highest ever six-monthly revenue and profits, signaling a strong return to normal trading following the periods of discounts to support our customers when their ability to trade was restricted. It's not just revenue and profits that are at record levels. Levels of consumer engagement and customer numbers have also hit new highs during this period.
From a consumer perspective, the change in activity that we saw at the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic has not only continued, but grown further. A sign of the general shift to digital, which is very clearly here to stay. In April 2021, we successfully delivered our annual pricing event, which included a new product, Retailer Stores. These allow our customers to create their own customizable destination on Auto Trader and have generated high visitor numbers throughout the period. In May 2021, we evolved our package staircase, implementing a high-level package and creating a consistent cross-platform experience across devices, thereby improving the experience for consumers. These product innovations have seen good levels of adoption, contributing to a record level of spending by our customers, despite well-documented supply shortages across the industry. The pandemic has accelerated the shift towards buying and selling vehicles online.
Car buyers have long wanted to complete more of the process online because of its transparency and convenience. Long-term sustained change in mindsets and operational processes will take time, despite periods in the last 18 months where our customers were forced to fulfill transactions remotely and online. However, we have made good progress in developing our online car buying journey, which will both leverage and enhance our core marketplace. With the launch of Market Extension, vehicles can be advertised nationally for local delivery, fulfilled either by the retailer or our logistics marketplace, which has been adapted to facilitate home delivery, a service we provide to some of the U.K.'s largest dealer groups. Car owners can now get a guaranteed price for their existing car through either part exchange or Instant Offer, where the vehicle is collected from the car owner's home.
Both of these products are fulfilled by our partner, Cox Automotive. We've launched a reservations product with a small trial, and for the first time, have real-time, full attribution of a buyer who originated on Auto Trader and went through to purchase the car on the retailer's forecourt. Finally, we continue to make progress in bringing a finance application journey to Auto Trader, such that car buyers can find out their eligibility and apply for finance rather than just inquire about a representative rate. We developed the part exchange, reservation, and finance journeys independently, and are now focused on creating the technology and interfaces that bring these components together to create an end-to-end retailing platform for retailers and journey for consumers that bridges the gap between the online and offline journey. Now turning to our financial results.
As everyone will remember, during the first half of financial year 2021, we offered our retailer customers two months of free advertising and one month with a 25% discount when they were required to close their physical forecourts during the initial phase of the pandemic. Because of this, we believe that the first half of financial year 2020 provides a more meaningful comparison with which to view our performance. Using this comparator, revenue increased by 15% to GBP 215.4 million, with trade revenue up 19% to GBP 192.3 million. Operating costs increased by 15%, mainly due to a return to more normal levels of marketing spend.
Operating profit also increased by 15% to GBP 151.7 million, with operating profit margin returning to 70%, the same level as in the first half of 2020. Compared to the first half of financial year 2020, basic EPS was up 13% to GBP 0.1263 per share, and cash generated from operations was up 28% to GBP 169.9 million. During the past six months, having reinstated our capital policy, we returned GBP 148.4 million of cash to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share buybacks. GBP 48 million was paid in September 2021 for our full year dividend, and GBP 100.4 million was used to buy back shares during the six-month period.
I'm pleased to announce that we are declaring an interim dividend of GBP 0.027 per share. Now on to our operational results, where prior year is a reasonable comparator. The average number of cross-platform visits increased by 20% to 68.7 million per month. Engagement, measured as the volume of cross-platform minutes, was up 14% to 633 million a month, and our share of minutes remained above 75% of all time spent across our main competitor set. The time spent on Auto Trader was almost nine times higher than our nearest competitor, the combination of Gumtree, Motors, and eBay.
The average number of retailer forecourts advertising with us grew 6% to 13,89`2. As previously mentioned, this growth was due to lower levels of cancellation over the past 12 months, with reasonably consistent levels of new business. We believe this is due to favorable market conditions, the support we have offered to customers throughout the pandemic, and a very clear increase in value delivered by Auto Trader, with inquiries up over 25% through the period. Average revenue per retailer per calendar month or ARPA was up by GBP 993 to GBP 2,199. GBP 640 of this increase was a result of COVID-19 discounts in the prior year. When normalized, ARPA grew by GBP 353 per month versus prior year, with good contribution across product, stock, and price. When compared to the first half of 2020, ARPA was up 13%.
Average physical cars on site was down 9% to 436,000 for the year. When we break this 9% down, 2% was due to the fall in the number of new cars on Auto Trader from 46,000 in the prior year to 39,000, which is a result of the well-documented semiconductor supply shortage. The remaining 7% was due to the decline in used cars on site and is entirely due to the stock offer in the prior year that was not repeated this year. The average number of full-time equivalent employees increased to 941, of which 18 was due to the acquisition of AutoConvert in July 2020.
Our cultural KPIs. We care deeply about our culture, which not only underpins our ability to move quickly, but is the leading reason why people choose to join Auto Trader. We measure progress using these KPIs, which will not always show a consistent upward trajectory given we are focused on systemic and long-lasting change. That being said, over time, the team and I are wholly committed to long-term improvement across all of these measures. We carry out check-in surveys with our people at regular interviews, which include a number of engagement questions, one of which is how proud employees are to work at Auto Trader, which remains high at 92%. We believe creating an inclusive culture and building diverse teams is critical to attracting and maximizing the potential of our people and therefore our business.
At board level, we maintained a 50/50 gender ratio, and we've announced the appointment of Jasvinder Gakhal as an Independent Non-Executive Director to the board with effect from 1 January 2022. Within leadership roles, as defined by the Hampton-Alexander review, we saw an increase in women to 36% and a small decline in those who disclose their ethnicity as BAME to 5%. Within the organization more broadly, the percentage of women was consistent at 39%, and the percentage of people from a BAME background was 12%. It's important to note that these percentages are based on the whole organization, not just those that disclose their ethnicity.
Finally, we will continue to report our Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions at year-end. We've completed a lot of work this year to understand our emissions, formed a plan to reduce them, and have validated targets that the organization is passionate about achieving. As we mentioned at our full year results, we have joined the Science Based Targets initiative business ambition for 1.5 degree warming, and have joined the UN Race to Zero to achieve net zero by 2050 at the very latest. However, we expect to achieve net zero well before that date. Our submitted targets will see us reduce emissions by 50% by the end of 2030 using financial year 2020 as the base year. I'll now hand over to Jamie, who will take us through the financials in more detail.
Thank you, Nathan, and good morning, everyone. Starting with revenue, total revenue for the first half increased 82% to GBP 215.4 million, and increased 15% versus the first half of 2020. Versus H1 2020 trade revenue increased by 19% with the largest component of this being retailer revenue, which increased by 18%. The large year-on-year increase was mainly due to the support we gave our retailer customers in the prior year, with free advertising offered in April and May 2020, followed by a 25% discount in June 2020 as initial restrictions were lifted. The average number of retailers advertising with us increased through the first half to end with an average of 13,892. This was up 6% compared with the same period last year.
As Nathan mentioned, the increase in the number of forecourts was largely due to lower levels of cancellation. Also within trade, we've seen an increase in home trader pay-as-you-go listings, as well as growth in other trade revenue. Consumer services revenue increased by 40% year-on-year. Within this private revenue, which is largely generated from individual sellers who pay to advertise their vehicle on our marketplace, increased by 33%. There was a small contribution within this line from our Instant Offer product, which allows consumers to quickly sell their car from home using a guaranteed price. Motoring services was up 52% year-on-year as a result of strong growth in both our insurance and finance offerings. For consumer services, we now expect the full year to see 10%-20% growth versus financial year 2021.
Revenue from manufacturer and agency customers was flat at GBP 5.1 million. Last year, revenue was largely impacted by uncertainty caused by the pandemic, while this year marketing spend has been reduced due to low levels of supply created by semiconductor shortages. We expect full year manufacturer and agency revenue to be in line with that achieved in financial year 2021. Now on to ARPA, live car stock, and retailers. ARPA increased by 82% year-on-year, with the average revenue per retailer generated across the period at GBP 2,199 per month. The chart on the left shows the components that contribute to the movement in ARPA compared to the prior year.
As you can see, much of the increase came from COVID-related discounts, which were offered to customers in the prior year, which by their absence in 2022, contributed GBP 640 of growth to total ARPA. Ignoring the COVID-19 discount, underlying ARPA increased year-on-year by GBP 353 per month, which was spread across our price, stock, and product levers. We delivered our annual pricing event on April 1, 2021, and this contributed the majority of the GBP 74 price lever, which equated to an effective increase of just under 4%. Product contributed GBP 119 year-on-year, with the breakdown as follows. Approximately half of this product growth was a result of retailers purchasing more prominence products on Auto Trader.
This was made up of increasing the penetration of our new Enhanced, Super, and Ultra packages to 25% of retailer stock by September 2021. These packages sit above our standard level, with 22% being the comparison for the prior year. Our Market Extension product, which was launched in May 2021, had 4% of retailer stock on it by the end of September this year. We also saw greater uptake in our positional pay-per-click product. Outside of prominence, there was some contribution from growth in our new car advertising product with 2,100 franchise retailers paying at the end of September 2021, which was an increase from just over 1,500 retailers in September 2020. There was also a small contribution from our Retailer Stores product, which is included in our annual pricing event in April 2021.
Looking now at stock, the chart on the right shows the profile of live physical car stock. As a reminder, live physical car stock includes all cars advertised on Auto Trader. This means that in addition to paid for retailer used stock, it also includes new car stock, private and home trader stock, and the impact of stock offers. As usual, we've stripped out the impact of new cars and provided underlying used car live stock, the lighter of the two lines. It is important to note that the stock lever is not driven by live stock, but by the number of paid stock units. These two numbers have not correlated in this reporting period, with the stock lever being up GBP 160 despite a decline in live stock.
Last year, live stock was impacted by a stock offer, which allowed customers to double their stock for free from late March to mid-July 2020, which did not impact paid stock. We saw the full conversion of that stock offer in September 2020, which was followed by strong growth in paid for stock unit throughout the second half of last financial year, meaning we entered this current year with a very strong run rate. We have seen some downgrades in paid stock during this first half as a result of faster stock turn and limited supply. Much of this has come from our larger franchise customers who generally have a lower cost per car.
Overall, averaged across the period, paid-for stock units have held up above prior year levels, and there have been no stock offers in H1 2022. Finally, the number of retailer forecourts has increased throughout the period, growing 6% year-on-year. As mentioned, this has been due to lower cancellations with reasonably consistent levels of new business. Moving now to costs. Last year, the group made the decision to reduce costs, mainly through discretionary marketing spend while our retailer customers were closed in the first quarter of 2021. With a return to more normal levels of spend in 2022, total costs increased by 29% to GBP 65.4 million, which was a 15% increase versus H1 2020.
Marketing spend for the period increased by 203% to GBP 10.6 million, which was equal to 4.9% of revenue. People costs increased by 16% to GBP 35 million. The increase in people costs was primarily driven by an increase in the average number of full-time equivalent employees, which increased by 5% to 941. This increase was partly driven by the acquisition of AutoConvert in July 2020, accounting for 18 of that overall increase. The average cost per employee increased by 10% due to an increase in performance-related pay and as a result of the executive directors and the board foregoing 50% or more of their salary and fees for the period of April to June 2020.
It was also impacted by the annual pay review, which resumed in July 2021, having not occurred last financial year. Other costs, which include data services, property related costs, and other overheads, increased by 16%. The increase was primarily due to increased overhead costs, including the return of travel, office, and people related costs, as well as higher IT spend as we continue to move more of our services and applications to the cloud. Depreciation and amortization increased to GBP 3.6 million, mainly driven by office improvements and an additional lease for increased office space. Capital expenditure in the period was GBP 2.2 million, largely through investment in our Manchester office, with refurbishment to support our new connected working approach by providing more collaborative workspaces.
As a reminder, our low levels of CapEx and depreciation are not a reflection of low levels of investment in our business. In addition to our investment in cloud-based services, we have over 300 people in product and technology who are continuously improving our platforms and developing new products for customers, the cost for which are taken in full through our income statement in people costs. With revenue up 82%, costs increasing 29%, and a GBP 1.7 million contribution from our share of Dealer Auction's profit, operating profit was GBP 151.7 million, an increase of 121% on the prior year, and operating profit margin returned to 70%.
Cash generated from operations increased by 157% to GBP 169.9 million. The year-on-year increase in cash generated from operations was bigger than that of operating profit due to a positive movement in working capital. Part of this movement was due to the free periods in December 2020 and February 2021 impacting on our VAT liability at our 2021 year end. The statutory income statement outlines areas beyond our revenue and operating costs. Net finance costs reduced by 26% to GBP 1.7 million, as the lower level of debt drawn resulted in lower interest. Also included was an additional GBP 0.5 million of accelerated amortization of debt issue costs as a result of reducing our debt facility from GBP 400 million to GBP 250 million in September this year.
Our profit before tax was GBP 121.7 million, and our effective tax rate was 19%, which remains in line with the standard U.K. rate. Basic EPS increased by 126% as a result of the increase in profit after tax. As Nathan said earlier, the directors are recommending an interim dividend of GBP 0.027 per share. Moving now to cash and capital allocation. We remain in a net cash position at the end of the period. Cash generated from operations of GBP 169.9 million was used to pay GBP 2.2 million of CapEx and lease payments of GBP 1.6 million. In cash terms, we paid GBP 1 million of interest and GBP 27.8 million of corporation tax.
Of the remaining free cash flow, GBP 48 million was paid in dividends relating to last year's final dividend and GBP 100.9 million, inclusive of fees, was used to buy back shares at an average price of GBP 6.36. In total, we've returned GBP 148.4 million to shareholders in the first six months of this year. With effect from 24th September 2021, the company reduced the total commitment of its syndicated revolving credit facility by GBP 150 million from GBP 400 million to GBP 250 million. The group continues to be highly cash generative and remains in a net cash position such that the size of the original GBP 400 million facility is no longer required. The facility will terminate in two tranches. GBP 52.2 million will mature in June 2023, and GBP 197.8 million will mature in June 2025.
The Group's capital allocation policy remains broadly unchanged, continuing to invest in the business, enabling it to grow, while returning around 1/3 of net income to shareholders in the form of dividends. Surplus cash following these activities will be returned by way of our share buyback program. That concludes the financials. I'll now pass over to Catherine to take you through the current market and product update.
Thank you, Jamie, and good morning, everyone. Moving on to slide 14. As the U.K. emerged from the most recent national lockdown in June 2021, demand for both new and used cars has been strong. This demand has been fueled by a catch-up in some transactions that would have likely occurred in 2020, but for COVID-related lockdowns, positive consumer sentiment towards car ownership, and good levels of consumer confidence and affordability. New car registrations in the six months to September 2021 were at circa 900,000. Although there was year-on-year growth of 17% versus the same period in 2020, registrations are still 23% below the equivalent period in 2019, as semiconductor shortages have impacted the supply of new cars.
These constraints have impacted used cars, in particular for our larger customers, as lower new car sales have meant fewer part exchanges and a lower volume of cars sent to auction from wholesalers. The first six months of used car transactions were strong, with 31% growth year-on-year, although there were quite different growth rates across the two quarters. Quarter one lapped the first pandemic lockdown and saw growth of over 100%, whereas quarter two, impacted by supply shortages, saw a 6% decline year-on-year. We continue to publish a monthly price index of trade cars advertised on Auto Trader, the results of which are shown in this chart. The blue line shows the average price of a vehicle advertised, which you can see has increased significantly over the six months to September 2021.
By grouping cars by type, age, and fuel, we've isolated the impact of underlying like-for-like price increases shown as the dark blue bars. As you can see, for the last six months on the chart, like-for-like prices have increased, with high levels of demand combined with constrained supply generating upward pressure on prices. This has resulted in a like-for-like price increase of 10.8% versus the prior year and over 20% growth in both September and October compared to the same period last year. This strong pricing trend has resulted in most of our customers being able to trade more profitably, generating significantly more profit per vehicle and selling vehicles faster. This is despite overall volume being down for some retailers. Over the past six months, our audience position has strengthened as overall consumer demand has increased and as we continue to exhibit clear market leadership.
Starting in the top left, cross-platform visits grew by 20% year-on-year to 68.7 million visits per month. Engagement, which we measure as the total number of minutes spent on our platforms, increased by 14% to 633 million minutes per month. Our share of total minutes amongst our competitor set, as measured by Comscore, has remained strong at over 75%. We know that Comscore data has its flaws, and so we use our internal metrics to measure our performance, but it remains the most useful reference point for tracking our position in the market over time. The chart in the top right looks at our sources of traffic on a paid versus non-paid basis.
As our spend in marketing returns to more normal levels versus the reduction we made in the prior year, the percentage of our traffic that comes from paid channels increased slightly to 5%. The chart below this shows the total minutes spent across an expanded set of competitors, retailers, and manufacturers. On average, over the six-month period to September 2021, Comscore estimated that consumers spent almost 9 x more minutes on Auto Trader than our nearest competitor, the combination of Gumtree, Motors, and eBay, and almost 13 x that of CarGurus and PistonHeads combined. All of the other marketplace sites, including Cinch, totaled 18 million minutes, making Auto Trader almost 36 x bigger than all of those sites combined. Outside of our competitors, we also compare our size of audience to that of retailers that are large enough to be tracked by Comscore.
This includes the franchise groups, independent supermarkets and online retailers like Cazoo. The number of minutes spent on Auto Trader was almost 30 x that of all of these retailer sites combined. When doing the same exercise with all manufacturer sites, Auto Trader is almost 30 x their combined size. Now on to our product update. In April 2021, we successfully delivered our annual review of packages and pricing. As well as an underlying price increase, the event included the launch of Retailer Stores. This product has given our retailers their own customizable destination on Auto Trader. As we build out our digital retailing journey, we envisage these becoming an area that retailers can use as part of their own e-commerce journey. Over the past six months, we have seen over 28 million visits to these pages.
At the beginning of this financial year, we evolved our advertising package structure and changed the sort order for listings. Where our packages previously promoted adverts based on the device the consumer was searching on, we've created a consistent cross-platform experience with adverts appearing in search based on a relevancy algorithm, which takes package level into account. As part of this change, we have discontinued our basic package, introduced a higher level, and rebranded our top three levels Enhanced, Super and Ultra. This change occurred alongside the launch of Market Extension, which enables retailers to target buyers outside of their local area by appearing in local searches. This product presents vehicles that are available to car buyers but not currently located near them in the Auto Trader search experience.
As Jamie mentioned earlier, we saw good uptake for our higher-level packages, with 25% of retailer stock on a package higher than standard in September 2021 versus 22% the year before. At the same date, September 2021, there was 4% of retailer stock on Market Extension. Moving on now to slide 20. In the last six months, we have improved our offering for consumers who want to sell their car quickly and conveniently for cash through our Instant Offer product. We have also created a connection with our Guaranteed Part-Exchange product. Customers who subscribe to Guaranteed Part-Exchange now have access to our B2B auction platform, Dealer Auction, where the vehicles acquired through Instant Offer are sold to retailers.
The ability to source more stock from consumers is a key differentiator for online car retailers, and this innovation enables our retailers the same benefit by leveraging Auto Trader's brand and technology. These products enable consumers to get an accurate and guaranteed price for their existing vehicle while shopping on Auto Trader, eliminating either the need to haggle over a part exchange or to look for other disposal routes for their current vehicle. Over the past six months, we've provided around 520,000 guaranteed valuations and purchased around 5,000 vehicles on Instant Offer. At the reporting date, we had around 500 customers using the Guaranteed Part-Exchange product, with 20% of them paying for the product. I will now hand over to Nathan to talk through our digital retailing journey and the outlook.
Thank you, Catherine. For much of the past two years, we've developed the components shown here, which make up the key steps in the online car buying journey. These products will enable retailers to support more of the buying journey online and realize some of the efficiencies seen by many over the past 12 months. We believe executing on this journey will move Auto Trader's addressable market beyond marketing and advertising into other parts of the cost base that currently support the sale, thereby enabling both retailers and us to capture a greater percentage of gross profit. Taking each component in turn. With the launch of Market Extension, retailers who have vehicles at centrally held locations where they offer home delivery or multi-site customers who are able to move vehicles to a location closer to the buyer can advertise those cars within local searches on Auto Trader.
As already mentioned, we ended September with 4% of retailer stock on this product. In June, we launched a trial for reservations, the main purpose of which was to understand our ability to take payments on Auto Trader and for us to act as an agent, moving the consumer beyond searching to buying their next car. We've successfully completed over 100 reservations, where for the first time on Auto Trader, we have been able to clearly track a buyer from our platform onto the forecourt and into their next car. The first of these transactions is the hardest, so it is a great achievement. However, it has also highlighted two main challenges, which we have also seen in Guaranteed Part-Exchange. Firstly, it will take time to change ingrained retailer processes.
Secondly, we need to do everything we can to ensure real-time stock availability and pricing on Auto Trader. These have both been more challenging due to the exceptional market conditions, but we believe they can be overcome in time. As Catherine mentioned, we've connected our Guaranteed Part-Exchange and Instant Offer products, so there are now multiple ways a person on Auto Trader can dispose of their car in a transparent online journey. Consumer engagement with these products has grown, and we have completed 520,000 guaranteed valuations and purchased 5,000 cars through Instant Offer using our partner Cox Automotive. We've integrated these products with our B2B auction platform, Dealer Auction, so that cars acquired through Instant Offer or Guaranteed Part-Exchange can be purchased by retailers, allowing access to stock that they would not otherwise have.
On Guaranteed Part-Exchange, we had 1,000 customers trialing the product in March 2021. However, we decided to remove customers with low engagement due to the impact on the consumer experience. As of September, we have around 500 customers that are significantly more engaged with 20% of those now paying. Another important part of the journey is finance. In July 2020, we acquired AutoConvert, who provide a retailer finance platform that helps retailers process finance applications online and on the forecourt. Through automation, customers benefit from increased finance conversion and penetration levels and reduced costs. The business' core functionality coupled with the fact that it's integrated into over 60 lenders has helped us to develop our own finance product on Auto Trader.
This will enable consumers to complete a full finance application with retailers on our site, and if required, enable the retailer to process new applications or complete existing applications on the forecourt. This is a complex product, but we should be in a position to commence small scale trials in the second half of this financial year. Finally, there will be consumers that want to have their car delivered, which we can facilitate in a cost-effective way through our Motor Trade Delivery platform, which we've rebranded AT Moves. 20% of the 3,000 or so moves we do a week are currently direct to consumer, making it an important strategic capability as we enable more and more retailers to sell online. There is still a lot more work to do to bring these components together into a seamless experience ahead of meaningfully scaling up trials and ultimate commercialization.
We are making good progress. We believe our approach will leverage and enhance the strength of our marketplace and ultimately mean we can offer more cars for consumers to buy online while enabling any retailer, new or existing, to become a true multi-channel retailer.
Now on to the outlook. The board is confident for the second half of the year. The majority of revenues are recurring in nature, and most of the significant growth events for the year have been successfully delivered in the first half. Notable events were our annual pricing event, the launch and initial uptake of new products, all of which have occurred alongside low levels of retailer churn. For the full year, we now expect modest year-on-year growth in retailer forecourt numbers and low double-digit ARPA growth on FY 2020 levels.
The stock level, which shows the year-on-year movement, is likely to represent a small headwind when compared to FY 2021, as we lap a strong second half of last year. Operating profit margins for the full year are expected to be in line with FY 2020 levels. That concludes the presentation. We'll now move to Q&A, taking questions from within the room.
As we start down front, let's work our way back. We got Adam down here at the front.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Adam Berlin. It was clear that in the first half of this year, though, there was not much revenue in the product ARPA when Jamie gave the breakdown of the different components. When is it realistic to expect some impact on product ARPA from the digital transaction journey?
Oh, did you want to? Shall I go with the second question?
I'll go shoot all three.
Okay.
The second question's on the stock ARPA guidance. Clearly the first half was a really strong number for stock ARPA, +160 GBP, but you're guiding it to be a negative on a full year basis. What's driving that major change? And are you already seeing, say, in the October numbers that you've already completed a decline in stock ARPA? Or is that just something you're expecting to happen as the year pans out? The third question's on costs. H1 2022 costs were about 15% above H1 2020. There were some one-offs in there, Jamie, that you described to do with acquisitions and board members. What do you think is the right underlying OpEx growth rate to be thinking about medium term for this business? Thanks very much.
Perfect. Okay. I'll start with the first one. When can we expect revenue from digital retailing? There is some digital retailing revenue in the product ARPA, but you're right to say that it's not significant. Instant Offer, we're monetizing, GPX, we're monetizing, and Market Extension, we're monetizing. Particularly GPX and Market Extension are both reasonably high-yielding products, but they're coming from a small base, and we're definitely not focusing on those revenues at the moment. That's mainly because our full focus when it comes to digital retailing now is how do we get those products pulled together and then start to get mass engagement with the product so we can start to change the retailers, the whole processes that the retailers work through so they can unlock the benefits of that.
I think in reality, we wouldn't be looking to seriously scale up those trials. Well, first, we've got to get the interface together for consumers and an interface together for retailers. I think that takes us the best part of to the middle of next calendar year. I think it's from that point we start to very meaningfully scale up, trials, get engagement, and then monetization would be on the back of that. I think at this time, I wouldn't be willing to give a prediction on exactly when revenues come through. I suspect the way they come through is, as they are now, small start and gradually growing over time, but not really accelerating until, you know, after we've got those mass trials, got a very good sense of what value is so that we can make sure that we put the right price on it.
I think it's fair to say we're rushing to get engagement. At the moment, we're not rushing to monetize. I do think that's the right approach. I mean, the most important battle for us to win when it comes to digital retailing is to have more cars available to buy online, and that will come from engagement. That's kind of where our focus is at the moment. We still think long term, there's lots of reasons to believe it's a very, very good opportunity for the business that's incremental to the one that's actually, you know, underpinning these results that we've got today.
Yeah. I can say, well, certainly kick us off on the stock question. You know, the thing we sort of said in the presentation, We have come into the year with a very strong run rate. A number of customers that took advantage of the December and February pre-periods to upgrade not just stock, but also package level. If you come in with a very strong run rate, you then see the kind of supply tightness and everyone tracking the live stock. We'll have seen that come off or have read, you know, about reasonably well-publicized challenges. You do then get, though, a bit of a lag in terms of how that impacts paid stock. The sort of downgrade that we've seen through the first half has sort of been gradual and continuing through this first period.
To answer your question on October, it is currently, you know, at this point, a headwind. When you think about the kind of year-on-year comp and the 160+ in this first half, you know, we're lapping a relatively weak first half last year, whereas -156. On the flip side for the second half, you know, where we saw those upgrades, particularly in Q4, or even earlier, you know, from mid-early October, we saw upgrades coming through to immediately sort of starting to lap that period. I don't think we believe, you know, that the supply challenges are gonna meaningfully improve over the next six months. We sort of, you know, that's what we kind of put through in that sort of ARPA guidance.
I guess just generally in the market, we are still seeing stock uncertainty depending on which OEM brand you talk to, their position on semiconductor supply, their view on timing of when they'll be back to more what they would consider more normal production volumes is quite uncertain. We are expecting it to gradually improve during the course of 2022, but we're not expecting, you know, a big moment early in the new year when suddenly new car registration levels are back to where we would have seen pre-pandemic.
Just on the cost question. I think if you sort of look back to sort of pre-COVID levels, you know, the cost growth was maybe low single digit. I think we are steering that cost growth will be a bit higher than that going forward. The areas that we're investing in, you know, I think Nathan talked about the digital retailing journey, the complexities of it, the number of components within it. We're looking to bring more people into the organization that can help support that journey. There's probably more growth in people costs than you might have seen historically. There's probably also a little bit more marketing. We've run a couple of campaigns recently, particularly pushing the Instant Offer product.
I think where there are new parts of the functionality on site that consumers are maybe less familiar with that you can find on Auto Trader, we wanna make sure that we're marketing those. Then if you're comparing versus the COVID years, you know, there is slightly higher other costs just from returning to the office, you know, people related expenses and more people, you know, does tend to come through in marginally higher overhead. Those are the drivers and it is higher than those sort of low single-digit cost growth levels we've done historically.
If we go to Miriam, start working my way back.
Miriam Adisa, Morgan Stanley. Morning, everyone. Firstly, just to follow up on the last question about cost growth. In terms of headcount, are you seeing anything in terms of sort of difficulty hiring labor, any pressures around that? If you could just talk a bit about that. Also just given what you said about the sort of investments, how should we be thinking about margins going into next year as well? On the early learnings from the reservation trust, you could just share a bit more about that. You spoke about the challenges in terms of getting the processes with the dealers improving. If you could talk about is that something that you need to do yourself, or is it something that requires sort of external help as well?
Finally, just on the higher uptake of the prominence products, just wondering, you know, what you're seeing or hearing from dealers on the new package structure, because I guess slightly surprising that they would be so willing to take up these products in this current market environment. If you could just give some more color on that. Thanks.
Yeah. Catherine, do you wanna take the first one on cost growth? I can cover margin. Nathan, you can do reservations, and Catherine, you can do prominence.
Sure. I think on hiring overall, the big areas that we're typically hiring in are technology, engineers, and then, marketing and sales to support either retailers or consumers. I think those areas for us in the digital space have always been relatively competitive. We're fortunate that much of our technology capability is based in Manchester. In the Manchester area, we are a big brand and a big local employer. That focus that Nathan talked to on all of our cultural KPIs, that's well known and well understood in the local Manchester area and is a huge draw for us for talent, which is partly why we have it as such a key strategic priority. I would say we're still successfully recruiting.
We're returning to, I guess, more typical pre-COVID levels in terms of pace of recruitment and the level of churn that we're seeing in employees, after a period of sort of 18 months-24 months when there wasn't much movement at either end. I do think we expect some salary inflation in technology and in marketing areas, just as those markets are becoming probably more competitive than they were before. We haven't seen it yet impact our ability to recruit, but Jamie's comments on cost growth I think are fair and right, that we may see more salary inflation in those areas than we've seen in the past.
Just to add on the margin point at the end. I think looking further forward, you know, obviously we've bounced back to 70% margins in fiscal year 2022 in this first half. I think we'd expect it to hold reasonably flat at those levels. I don't think this cost growth is gonna put any pressure on margins. I think the investments that we wanna make, you know, costs will grow in line with revenue.
Do you want me to take reservation?
Yep.
Yeah. As I said, the first of getting a product to go through the pipe is often the one that you learn the most from and the hardest to get to. I think, we've learned some important lessons. The first thing that we wanted to know is whether we could plumb through taking payment or a deposit for a car, and plumbing that through to the retailer is fundamentally different to what Auto Trader has done historically. We tend to send inquiries, and that's about the depth of the relationship. Whereas this, we're taking a payment from a consumer, holding it in an account, waiting for the consumer to go into the retailer, confirm that they bought the car, and then transferring that through.
While it doesn't sound particularly complicated, it's worlds away from what we've done historically. Testing that plumbing was the first thing, and we know that now works. The second thing is will consumers do it? Actually, when we look at the conversion, and it's only a relatively small-scale trial, so I wouldn't say this is statistically significant, but we have seen that consumers are willing to reserve cars on Auto Trader. We've got a massive audience that Catherine spoke about, so you never expect the percentages to be high because there aren't enough cars in the U.K. for those percentages to be high. But the conversion rates to make that reservation are good.
We've got confidence actually that should we roll that out, or when we do roll that out, that we think consumers will take up that functionality. That all sounds merry and great, but it's not all been smooth sailing. We've also learned that, I mentioned that changing dealers' behaviors, getting them onboarded, this will sound silly, but those of you that covered us when we did the original dealer finance product following the Capital Markets Day will recall that getting an FCA number from a retailer, getting their bank details, getting the director to sign, off on a joint account that we're agent for, those things sound very, very simple. With retailers, they are notoriously difficult because they're out buying a car, especially at the moment, they're selling cars like they've never sold cars before.
We need to make that onboarding process as simple and as singular as we possibly can, which is one of the reasons why we think joining up the products makes a lot of sense because you don't want to do that three times round. You're better to kind of take the pain and tackle it all in one go and get someone fully digital retailing. Then the final one will sound quite odd, but it becomes a little bit of an issue when you're taking reservations, and I think Catherine mentioned it, I mentioned it as well, that cars need to be available. Now, most cars on Auto Trader, you would like to think are available, but with the speed with which cars are selling at the moment, and some customers are only updating their stock maybe once or twice a day.
Actually, there are a number of reservations that have been reserved, but they've not gone fully through because the car actually wasn't necessarily available or wasn't as described. We think we can. That's the challenge I think we can definitely overcome. We've got an API in place that allows real-time integration with Auto Trader and also gives access to better data than is available anywhere else. That's something that we're looking to provide to retailers, both as an enabler of just better retailing generally, but particularly digital retailing as well. That's called Auto Trader Connect, which you may have or may not have heard about. That's a handful of the big learnings.
The final question on Prominence. Are you absolutely right with very strong consumer demand and fast speed of sale? It's not necessarily like the obvious backdrop for a very strong Prominence performance. I think there's been a number of things that have made that backdrop actually quite a positive one, some the market helping, some things that we've done. Firstly, while the market has been very strong, actually competition between retailers has arguably been more intense than ever. If you think about what our products now do, you could always buy Prominence to compete locally with the competitors that were down the road or in the same town. Now you've got retailers conquesting into new regions through Market Extension.
The sense of competition that any individual retailer is feeling is arguably stronger than it's ever been, not just because of the extra marketing money that many players are investing, but retailers are seeing it and experiencing it in their local areas. That means that while the market is strong, there's still a very intense competition for share of that market. Secondly, the products, the new package staircase, the mechanism, if you remember, we made it cross-platform, and the higher levels are driven by a boost mechanic. That makes for any individual retailer, the performance uplift that you get much more visible and measurable than it was on our old package staircases.
If you're worried about people conquesting in your area or worried about what your local competitor's doing, you can see much more visibly now on Auto Trader the impact that those packages are having. Then finally, I think because retailer overall health and profitability has been pretty good, retailers have been able to afford to upgrade. That affordability, combined with the fact that overall sentiment towards Auto Trader I still think is pretty good, certainly from the customers I've spent time with, they've had both the willingness and the affordability there to invest in those packages. Those three things have really driven, I think, that performance probably ahead of what we might have expected for the Prominence product.
As we work our way along, Sarah.
Sarah Simon from Berenberg. A few from me, please. First one, on the Market Extension product, you talked about 4% of stock being available today. Now obviously, there's a lot of small dealers who wouldn't have the capability to deliver outside their zone. What do you think is the % of stock that could, you know, if you achieved 100% penetration. Within the viable base, what might that be?
Secondly, on the kind of delta between valuations and stock, so the 520,000 versus the 5,000. I was driving in last night, and I kept hearing ads from Motorway, and then you've got billboards advertising all the others. Who are your biggest competitors, you know, the ones you are most scared about in terms of the people who are gonna take away the 520,000 from you? Then the final one was with Retailer Stores, can you give us an idea of the penetration of that, please, within the dealer base?
Yeah. Shall I take the first one? Nathan, you take the second, and Catherine third.
Sure.
I think you're absolutely right that Market Extension does rely on the customer either having a bigger footprint, so multiple sites, or the capability to facilitate delivery. I think, you know, it's a bit of an estimate, but maybe 25% of stock would be reasonable for the kind of addressable market. I mean, obviously, as we, you know, looking longer term, you know, as we build out the digital retailing journey, we do have the capability. Nathan mentioned AT Moves, our sort of logistics platform. I think, you know, over time, as we build out both the online journey and, you know, continue to grow our capability around logistics, I think we might hope that we can increase our addressable market over time.
I think it will be very connected to how many. It will be very linked to the digital retailing conversations we're having as well. If you look at analysts and consultant forecasts out sort of four, five years, we're talking about 10% of cars being bought entirely online. We need retailers for market extension to work effectively. As you say, we need retailers to be going on that digital retailing journey operationally. They need to be set up to support being able to either enable consumers to click and collect or to home deliver. I think it's gonna be a gradual runway towards hopefully that 25% number rather than, you know, a big shift overnight.
Yeah. On the consumer disposal, just make a very quick point first. The 520,000 guaranteed valuations is a mixture of Guaranteed Part-Exchange valuations and Instant Offer valuations. The 5,000 that we've quoted there is just the Instant Offer vehicles. The reason for doing that is there are a number of part exchange transactions we could put in there, but because the consumer gets a code and gets the completed valuation online without necessarily providing their details, many of them will just go into the retailer and wave the piece of paper in their face. We don't quite know exactly how many of those go through. Now, that product's subscription, so we're not really exposed to that from a commercial perspective.
In terms of the big competitors, I think you mentioned one of them, Motorway, kind of up and coming, in this space. They've got a different model to ours. Ours is very much convenience driven. Do your appraisal, get a price immediately. Motorway's model is, well, we'll kind of shop your car to a number of retailers and get you the best price. That's kind of the proposition. The biggest player in that space is, by some distance We Buy Any Car, which is part of the Constellation group. In terms of the second bit of your question as to which of those ones really worry us, if I'm really honest, people will know that I'm reasonably happy to share the things that I'm worried about.
In terms of competition and space for consumer disposal, I think my biggest worry is how can we enable scaling up quicker because we are picking up cars from consumers' driveways. We're used to a world of bits and bytes where we don't normally have to worry about human beings, trucks, and all those kind of inconvenient things. When you start picking up vehicles, even if it's through a partnership from consumers, you do hit real scale constraints. At the moment, we're having to throttle that offering, if anything, and we're spending more time worrying about how can we get that experience so that we can scale it up quicker.
I think that's because we're in a very fortunate position that we see most, I imagine, consumers that are looking to sell their car. We know a lot of them sell their car on Auto Trader, but a lot will also come to Auto Trader in the course of buying their car. Unlike other players that have to rely on brute force marketing, we do have the audience of people there 'cause car sellers are generally car buyers. We've got a big advantage on cost of acquisition over other players. It does lead us to that. Actually, we've just got to work out how can we scale, how can we get the operational infrastructure and model to scale up quicker. Retailer Stores was?
The Retailer Stores was a product we made available to all retailers. It is a bespoke customizable destination on Auto Trader where they can bring their value proposition to life, enabling consumers to compare not just between vehicles, but also to compare between the value proposition of different retailers. As the market is evolving, you know, retailers' propositions around the warranty or service plan or the things that they will bundle into the vehicle sale, they probably were seeing the market move quite a lot there and probably more differentiation between what some retailers are doing. The job for Auto Trader, I think in the future, is to bring more of the retailer value proposition to life on Auto Trader.
Ultimately, if we want consumers to do more on our platforms, then we need to enable them to do more of the jobs in that buying journey, and one of those jobs in the future that's going to be more important is comparing not just the car, but that overall retailer value proposition as well.
Come over to Lena.
Good morning. This is Lena from Exane BNP Paribas. I have two questions, please. The first one is how are you currently thinking about the monetization model for digital retailing versus the current subscription model? The second one is, do you have any plans to host a CMD to take us through the TAM revenue model and the wider opportunity in digital retailing?
Yeah. If I could take the first one and Nathan can take second. I think, I mean, monetization, you know, as Nathan sort of talked us through the different components, some of the complexity, and some of the timeframes, I think it is, you know, to say with any real certainty it's probably a little bit early, but I think, you know, the likelihood is some small level of subscription to take the overall digital retailing package and then some transactional elements pay for each car sold, depending on how many of the components are sort of attached to that transaction. There'd be a cost, you know, an additional cost for that. Again, in terms of sort of yields and uptake, there are lots of uncertainties and questions that we need to answer.
I think initial thinking, that's probably where we're likely to land at this stage.
On Capital Markets Day, Jamie's perhaps wondering how I answer the question. I think the reality is we don't expect digital retailing to materially impact the financials in the next year. It's not necessarily a big topic when it comes to talking about results. I think it does make sense for us sometime during the course of next year as we get clarity on the build and as we get closer to that bundled proposition, better clarity around the value, and then some ideas around how we might go from a commercialization perspective. I think we will host a Capital Markets Day, so we're not talking about it in the course of financial results to give an update on those things.
Exactly when that is, I think we need to let the next few months kind of pan out because we want to be in a position where we can say something that's meaningful, robust and, you know, can have a level of accountability about it moving forward. It's just about getting that timing right. We appreciate that people wanna know the answers on some of those questions. We just wanna make sure that we can give you answers that we're not gonna necessarily change. At the moment, it's fair to say that, you know, we have been kind of moving. It's been a bit of a journey and things have been moving on literally week by week. We want that to settle down before we do that.
Okay. Let's hear Gareth.
Morning. Gareth Davies from Numis. Two left for me. The first, just going back to learnings, and on Guaranteed Part-Exchange, it sounds like you've managed that quite to the 500 basically, and lower engagement people you've sort of removed, you said. Can you just talk us through the thinking there? Because if it's as hard as you suggest to onboard people, are you sort of de-onboarding them basically once it... Just expand a little bit on that. And then also just why are only 20% of people paying, not everybody? And then secondly, just in terms of the pricing event next year, obviously it's been a big positive in the current year with 4%. How should we be thinking about that as we look into next year?
Yeah. I mean, do you want to take it?
Yeah. Would Catherine take that? Can you take it?
Perfect. Okay. Yes. I would say that the honest answer to your question is the 1,000 customers that we had on trial were not onboarded in the way we're now onboarding customers, and that's really the answer to your question. We didn't have to offboard them, because actually they were not onboarded in the way that we've since realized that we need to do it. We basically got Guaranteed Part-Exchange out there reasonably quickly, got a group of customers, said, "Would you like to trial a product?" When we do that, especially when the product is free, we'll get lots of customers that say yes and then subsequently not use the product. Now, sometimes or will not engage with the product.
Now, our best and easiest products, like the prominence products we've spoken about today, require no engagement from the customer. We switch them on, they deliver value, as long as they answer the phone, which they don't always necessarily do that, but they will get value from the product. A product like Part-Exchange, you do need to, when the consumer walks in and says, "I've got this Guaranteed Part-Exchange value from Auto Trader," we don't want the customer or the retailer to say, "I don't know what you're talking about, and I'm not giving you that price for your car."
Those kind of things were happening because it's not necessarily we get very good engagement with the owner. On these products, on all of these products, we need engagement with everyone in the dealership because it is about that moment of customer contact when a consumer walks in. That's why we basically switched off. We didn't want that bad consumer experience happening. Learned a bit of a lesson with it. We did learn that the product is incredibly valuable and delivers lots of value, but that therein lies almost the problem because consumers will be using it and going to some retailers that won't necessarily use it. Now, you're always gonna get a little bit of that.
We're now going through a one-off process of keeping the engaged ones, converting them to saying either pay or come off the product. Those customers that weren't engaged, we just actually switched off the product for them. We're now kind of redoing that onboarding customers in the right way. The answer as to why the 500 aren't all paying is because it's a rolling trial now. If we think a customer is serious about engaging with the product, then we will allow them a set free trial period after which time the product converts to pay. It's a bit more of a rolling process. The only thing I would say is, you know, that's a little bit from the days of when we were building GPX, we were building finance, we were building reservations.
Now, if our focus is anywhere, it is on pulling those products together and saying, "Do you wanna be a digital retailer? It involves doing these three things, which is really the approach that we're taking.
On the event next year, you may have seen in the last few weeks that we've already launched the product for the event next year. Actually linked very much to some of what Nathan was just saying. One of our big learnings from the early trials in digital retailing has been that often the Auto Trader platform isn't an accurate enough reflection of what's actually happening on a retailer forecourt. We've had a product that centralizes stock management for retailers. It's actually been in market for the last year or so, and we've had over 300 customers paying for it. What's become clear is the functionality that product provides. Firstly, it enables the central destination, if you like, where all stock records are held and then updated across retailer website, across Auto Trader, across all systems they work with.
It also provides access to our underlying vehicle taxonomy and data. We see somewhere north of 40% often of spec-vehicle specifications on Auto Trader not being as accurate as they should be. Finally, also, it's real time, so it means that as stocks remove, as stocks reprice, that is automatically syncing with Auto Trader.
The way the industry works today, and it's traditionally worked, has been through a series of data feeds, which can run daily, can often, if the retailer system hasn't been updated by a certain time each day, you can be 48 hours out of sync, which with the current stock turn and repricing we're seeing from retailers, have been one of the big challenges with the reservations and some other products that, you know, a consumer would be reserving a car that might still be appearing on Auto Trader, but actually it's been sold on the retailer's forecourt. That's a product that we feel is an important foundational product for digital retailing, and we want all retailers to be able to have access to.
We've launched it in the last few weeks. It's going to be free for all customers until the package and pricing event for next year. The reason for that is that we need to, and are in the process of integrating with over 40 third-party and dealer management system providers in the industry to enable that direct connection from our systems into the core retailer stock systems. We've done many of those integrations. We've got a few more to complete between now and December time, which is when we're hoping to have most of them done. That means that the product contribution for next year's event, we're hoping to be slightly ahead of the product contribution for this year's event. I think price is probably likely to be quite similar to where we're at this year.
Should we go Jessica next?
Hi, morning. It's Jessica Pok from Peel Hunt. Just two questions, please. Just following on, Catherine, on the new products that you just mentioned. Just to understand, does this sit on top of a dealer system which will manage stock? Or you, I'm assuming this is not something that will replace what they have.
It's an API connection directly into their existing system, which is why we need to do the integration work with those third-party stock management and dealer management system providers.
I mean, how long is the processing actually? Is it quite quickly, you know, turn on the API and it can be done very relatively easily or actually it takes a while?
From our side, technically, it's relatively straightforward and we've completed a number of the integrations already, largely because it's a product that we've had live and in market for a number of months now. On the retailer side, there is a small amount of work that they need to do, but it's nothing like onboarding some of the other digital retailing products. It's mostly information and configuration work rather than big operational process or systems change.
Okay, great.
It should be easy for them to access.
Okay, great.
Well, it is worth adding that a lot of the retailers' website systems that they're using, they're using other parties to provide those. Most retailers don't really have any meaningful technology department themselves. We have actually focused on making it even easier for them. I think out of 46, 40 of them are working with us to integrate, in which case the dealer actually won't have to do anything really. It'll be enabled by their provider.
Okay, great. Just one for Jamie. In terms of marketing costs, you mentioned that it's gonna increase, but is that an assumption, an absolute increase, or do you mean are we gonna keep that flat as a percentage of revenue?
Yeah, sorry. In absolute terms, I still think that current thinking, you know, between 4.5% and 5% of revenue still feels reasonable. You know, whether when we've got this full journey, whether we start to think differently about it, but I think initial thinking is that's still the right level for us.
Thank you.
So long to Giles, then we'll do Kieran, and that'll finish.
Thank you. It's Giles Thorne from Jefferies. First question was for you, Nathan. You've in interview fairly recently spoken about the current market conditions going on for at least another six months, maybe 12 months. I just wanted you to cast your mind forward and think towards the end of kind of the year next year when, you know, gross margins are coming down and stock turnover is going down and the easy buying decision of a retailer in 2021 suddenly becomes a little bit more difficult. Could you just frame, you know, what from previous cycles or from what you know of retailers, how you're gonna frame the product conversation into 2023? A bit difficult right now, but that's my first question.
The second question, I think, is also for Nathan, just revisiting, I suppose, the competitive threat from BCA and Cinch. As you know, any dealer that buys a car through BCA can actually just immediately have it listed on Cinch and open up a digital channel in a fairly quick and efficient manner. Do you think retailers would really value that channel? Final question is back on Guaranteed Part-Exchange. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the GBP 100 offer to consumers that kicked off in August was the first time you ever allocated marketing to a consumer and tried to influence behavior. I don't know, directly in that fashion. A really philosophical question, why did you do that?
That was it. Okay, I'll take the first two as requested, and Catherine, who was responsible for that experiment can explain the outcomes of it to you. I'm not sure whether your question is whether market conditions will be better or worse at the end of 2023. I think the reality is, at the moment, we're at a 1.7-ish million-1.8 million new car market. It is the thing to watch in terms of supply. Supply is very, very tight because that number is about 700,000 cars less than what it would be in a normal year, 2.2 million-2.4 million, 500,000-700,000. Chances are next year will be very similar.
I think as Catherine said, we don't see it getting a lot worse. We're kind of, in terms of new car supply and production, it's kind of as bad as it's gonna be in terms of delivery times, and it should start to loosen up. I think you're probably right, actually. Giving you a quote, it may sort of sound ridiculous. You're probably right that it's six to 12 months because I said that in an interview. I do think that the reality is there's not a lot of visibility now, so chances are that new car supply doesn't start to really loosen up till the end of next year. Up until that point, you've still got all those reasons to believe that demand's going to be reasonably strong. Maybe some macro factors come in. You've got constrained supply, so the market will be reasonably good.
Once supply starts to come into the market, and like you say, the buying decision's a bit less easy for retailers. I think the truth is, and based on my experience, there's two things I would say. One thing, and Catherine's made the point, at the moment, dealers have money to spend, and so they're spending money with us on products. You could argue whether they need to spend money as much now as what they should do in a hard market. In hard markets, if they've got less money to spend, sometimes they'll spend less money. Now, it's counterintuitive because I would argue they should be doing exactly the opposite of that. When spend is constrained, needs must, you're running a 1.5% margin business. They'll be more thoughtful about where they spend their money.
Now, I'd suggest Auto Trader be quite low on the list of things to cut, and any of you that have seen any examples of retailer marketing, there is plenty of marketing going on at the moment that I think is probably not necessarily gonna be delivering you the same return as what Auto Trader does. We tend to see a flight to quality in that situation.
The second thing I would say about tougher markets, and I'm not sure we're in for this, when it snaps really quickly, like when finance dries up, the GFC dries up, what you tend to find is a market, where you will see a dip in stock, a dip in retailers, and that's because people go bust, and it takes time for those cars to go to a finance company, to go to an auction to find their way to the next retailer. It actually corrects reasonably quickly, much quicker than you would expect, because car retailing is about buying right and selling right. It's always about buying right and selling right. So actually, I think customers will be able to navigate that.
That brings me, I guess, to the final piece. It'll be when the market gets more normal because it is just very, very good, is probably the right way of saying it at the moment. When the market gets more normal, I think you will start to see the pressure of digital playing out much more. Retailers that are currently thinking, "Well, I'll just carry on like this for a while," I think they will then start to look differently at, "Well, hang on. Now I've got other customer groups, Cazoos, Cinchs that are selling into my local area. I need to think about should I provide home delivery or should I at least allow these cars to be bought online."
I think, for us, actually, that back end of next year, it's good for digital retailing. A bit slower stock turn's not bad for us at all. In fact, quite the opposite, actually. A bit more I mean, quick stock turn is essentially a headwind for us. I don't think those things moderating are bad apart from the fact that dealers might have a bit less money to spend. Net-net, I think a more normal market will be better for us in a number of ways. Cinch as a channel, I think, my own personal opinion, offering a channel where you say to a customer, "Why don't you give me the money? We'll buy the car, we'll prep the car, we'll sell the car. You can keep the margin."
That all sounds quite incremental and good. By the way, you pay us GBP 600 for it and we'll take the F&I.
On the one hand, that sounds like a reasonably incremental, why wouldn't you do that? The point is, if you've got the capital to spend, why on earth wouldn't you take the full retail margin and the F&I margin yourself? There's quite a big trade-off. The one situation where you might do that is if there is no other way of you selling online. And actually this gives you a channel to online. Obviously, the extent to which I think Cinch and others have success with a channel like that just bodes very well for exactly what we're doing, which is to give them give any retailer a channel online. We're not looking at getting into prep. We do delivery, though. There is a slight difference between those two things. The core business of a retailer is working capital prep fulfillment.
We're looking to kind of wrap around that. I think to degree that they have success, it bodes well for us. To the degree that they don't, I actually don't think it suggests that our proposition won't be successful because we are taking that very different approach, where we're asking the retailer to do the fulfillment really well, the prep really well, and actually we'll help do the sales process online very well and the finance online very well. Did you wanna take Instant Offer?
Sure. Yes, you're right. A GBP 100 offer that we ran over the summer until recently was the first time where we have directly looked to target consumers with incentives to transact or to complete journeys on Auto Trader. I think generally when we think about digital retailing and our relationship with consumers, we are moving from a world where we largely have kind of aggregated, anonymized, very big audience that we talk about, to a world where we need to build more direct one-to-one relationships with consumers. The last two businesses I've worked in have been transactional businesses where the marketing capability, this was actually probably a bigger part of the marketing capability than a lot of the marketing capability we have today.
I'm not sure the GBP 100 was deliberately a test, a first kind of experiment to try and understand how could this work for us, what we might be able to do with it in the future. We deliberately didn't include it in any of our above the line activity. We just kept it to on-site and very targeted promotional activity because it was a test. I think we're looking to trial similar things in the future and figure out which type of model like this might work for us best to begin to build that more direct relationship with consumers in the future.
A comment around group marketing.
Partially, but I think that's as much just linked to we're back post-COVID in a world where we want to get back to spending 4.5%-5% of revenue on marketing, and we think there's lots of marketing jobs to be done in terms of our brand and positioning in the market. Those tests are relatively small at the moment and quite targeted. We may look to ramp them up in the future as we get more momentum with some of those digital retailing products.
Yeah. I think that's the key point is what we haven't had before in our marketing is that cost per acquisition, revenue per acquisition, because most of our audience acquired turns into an inquiry, which is a, because of a sub-subscription model, there's no kind of incremental revenue. These products, Instant Offer, the digital retailing products, they are all different in that they will have an element of transactional revenue about them that we can attribute to marketing.
Sorry, just to clarify, because I just don't want a comment I made to be misinterpreted. The absolute increase in marketing spend, I was talking year-on-year. I think actually the marketing spend will probably be slightly lower in the second half than what we've seen in the first half.
Last question from Kieran.
Hi, Kieran Dudley from Liberum. Thanks for taking my questions. One, could you just give an insight into your conversations with traditional retailers post-COVID, and whether they're materially reevaluating the Auto Trader offering in the context of the emergence of the online-only players? Two, within that context, whether we should anticipate the new baseline ARPA growth beyond FY 2022 to be double-digit in a hypothetical neutral stock environment.
Do you want to take the first one, Catherine, and I can?
Sure
Take the second one.
I think first place to start, arguably, one good thing to come out of the pandemic period is we spend more time with our customers than we ever have before, largely because during the pandemic, the marketplace insight that we had, whether that was on consumer demand, whether that was on pricing movements, whether that was, you know, our predictions of what would come over the next month or the next few months, means that we now have well-established webinars, forums. That means I feel like the voice of our retailers has never been stronger in Auto Trader. In terms of what we're hearing and what the sentiment is overall, I think we have seen some retailers where they have consolidated or taken the decision to consolidate more of their marketing spend towards Auto Trader.
Some of the more traditional retailers that might have perhaps in the past been with three or four marketplaces, they're now, I think some of the actions we took in the pandemic and some of the support was provided means they're more prepared to take that call, and they see really good ROI returns from our platforms. We're also, hearing and seeing, I think, the benefits of some of the data products that we have rolled out in the past, whether that's Retail Check in previous events or whether that's what we're doing with Auto Trader Connect through this event. Our ability to power and become more of the platform that's driving other parts of retailers' business decisions makes our advertising products, I think, feel even more embedded with those retailers than they otherwise would be.
I think we feel confident that retailer sentiment and the positioning of our products is as strong as it's ever been. In terms of what that means for ARPA for H2, I don't know if you wanted to touch on.
Yeah. If the answer to the question is looking further into the future where we've got the digital retailing journey live, I mean, I think, you know, we said, you know, back when we listed that we wanted to grow our core business at mid to high single digits, and I think we believe that there's still good growth in that core business, even looking forward. The digital retailing opportunity, I think we believe should be incremental. It's hopefully adding extra value, addressing inefficiencies that might exist today. You know, it's easier said than done, but I think that's the aspiration that we've got. With that aspiration, you know, to try and tip that growth and that guidance into low double digits. Not quite sure what that timeframe is, but that's certainly what we're aspiring to.
Great. I think that's all the questions. Thank you very much, everyone.