Hello, welcome to today's Baltic Classifieds Group 2023 half-year results announcement. My name is Elliot, I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to register a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I'd like to hand over to Justinas Šimkus, CEO. The floor is yours. Please go ahead.
Good morning all, and welcome to BCG first half of the year results presentation. We bring you a very good set of the results. To begin with a strategic overview. I'm very excited to announce that after a record results last year, we continued to deliver a very strong double-digit growth in all four business units this year. We successfully executed our annual pricing event for our private customers in spring, increasing the yields from C2C ads, while improvements to our products and packages supported our annual pricing event for our business customers, which was implemented during the autumn. This will mainly contribute to the revenue growth in the second half of the year. It's important to remember that despite continuously executing our pricing events annually, we are still in early stage of monetization journey.
In summer, we completed the acquisition of the service vertical in Latvia and Estonia, GetaPro. We also own a service vertical in Lithuania, Paslaugos.lt, which doubled during this half of the year. This acquisition marked a strategic expansion in fastest-growing segment into new territory. Our revenue grew 19%, reaching almost EUR 30 million, while EBITDA exceeded EUR 22 million and was 16% up. We maintained industry leading margin at 77% despite significantly higher inflation environment in the Baltics. Adjusted basic EPS grew 31% to EUR 0.038, and cash conversion excluding GetaPro asset deal was maintained at 99%. Following our capital policy, we voluntarily repaid EUR 7 million of debt, ending the half year results with leverage at 1.4 x. We continue to return excess cash to shareholders by executing their share buyback program, which started a few months ago.
The clear and interim dividend of EUR 0.008 per share to be paid in the middle of January. BCG portfolio... dividend of EUR 0.008 per share to be paid in the middle of January. BCG portfolio has a huge reach in Baltics. In average, our sites were visited 63 million times per month, suggesting that each citizen in Baltics has visited our site 11 times per month. More normal selling periods resulted in 17% more active ads in automotive, 8% in real estate, while e-commerce growth led to 3% more listings in generalists. It's important to remember and also to see that the number of business customers were strong across all business units.
We had 1% more real estate brokers, 3% more automotive dealers, slightly less customers and jobs after a record year last year, over 50% more than two years ago. The significant lead over closest competitor, which we consider to be the most important KPI, was maintained across all major portals, now is from five to 28 times, depending on the period we look at. Our biggest portal, Autoplius.lt and job portal, CVBankas lead improvements over the last few years is of the particular note. Given they are operating in a more competitive markets and the relative increase represent a significant gain in their market share. Pricing and packaging improvements help to increase yields for both business and private customers. Average revenue per automotive dealer grew 22%, 15% for the private. In real estate, 20% for both B2C and C2C customers.
In jobs, 25% and over 100% in services. Generalist yield grew 15%. B2C and C2C revenue, we consider to be our core revenue streams, representing 88% of the total revenue. I'm delighted to see that it's growing the fastest in our portfolio. Now I will hand over to Lina to talk more about finance in more detail.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We ended the six-month period with the highest ever yearly revenue. The targeted 15% growth was exceeded and the revenue grew 19%. We have continued with the usual schedule of pricing events. In April, shortly before the current, currently reported period, we introduced C2C price changes for most of our portals, and these changes are reflected in the reported revenue numbers. In the very end of the period in September and October, we introduced B2C price and packaging changes. We did it in real estate, auto, and jobs portals. These made limited contribution to the first half-year revenue, with full contribution to be seen in the second half-year from autos and real estate, and from jobs to be rolled out throughout the following 12 months.
Each of our business lines grew in double digits, and Simonas will explain the details behind each business line growth separately. Overall, in automotive and real estate business lines, we have more ads, plus we have increased the yield from both B2C customers and C2C listings. Consequently, auto business line grew 19% and real estate 18%. After very strong last year, during which jobs and services almost doubled, jobs portal continued to grow 20% against the same period last year. If we compare with the same period two years ago, the growth was around 170%. The services part was benefiting from the yield improvement and value-added services usage. In total, jobs and services business line growth was 27% year-over-year.
Generalists grew 13%. That was also driven by growth in the number of listings and revenue per listed ad. The portfolio we manage is very well diversified across both business lines and revenue streams. You can see in the upper corner that auto and real estate business lines contribute approximately 60% of the group revenue, and the remaining 40% are almost equally generated by jobs and services and generalists. In addition to that, the split by revenue streams is 48% from B2C, 40% from C2C, so 88% is generated by the core business, and the remaining 12% comes from advertising plus ancillaries. This time, we wanted to show quarterly revenue by business line over the past 2.5 years.
We do not intend to show this every time, wanted to emphasize the resilience of each business line. You can see that COVID-19 didn't affect overall BCG business significantly. We gave some discounts to our business customers, we postponed pricing events, still grew 9% organically during the year 2021. Various COVID-related restrictions continued until the very end of 2022. In addition to that, in the end of February, what was the middle of Q4 of financial year, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and started a war there. We saw internet population focusing more on the news rather than shopping online or searching for a property or a car. The impact of this to our revenue was very short-term, a matter of weeks. It recovered within a quarter, therefore it's not seen in the quarterly revenue.
Our growth in 2022 was 22%. Despite the turbulences we went through, each of our business lines have maintained growth trajectory. Now moving to costs. We show the costs to EBITDA, and this period, there were no adjustments to it. Our group operates in a higher inflation environment for quite a few years, and for some time inflation is double-digit. Obviously, a significant component to inflation is energy prices, to which BCG is not too much directly exposed to. Our costs are under control. People costs account to the majority of our operating costs, which is more than 60%. The higher wage inflation is no news to our region. We have that for many years in a row, especially given one-third of the team is in tech.
The majority of the increase in people cost is in line with previous years and is driven by the annual salary reviews. Also the expected listed company cost materialized. We have a growing cost relating to the Performance Share Plan, because in July the group awarded the second portion of employee share options under the group PST scheme. The cost relating to it should continue increasing gradually during the first three-year period after the IPO. Thereafter, the cost should be relatively constant. Marketing costs remain at approximately EUR 1 million a year, and in absolute amount terms, we think we outspend our competitors. If looking at a percentage from revenue being 1.5%, that's a benefit of the fact that we're locally well-known portfolio of brands.
As Justinas mentioned, we're one of the most visited portfolios across the regions, and we've, we're visited by each resident 11 times a month. Our websites are among the most visited sites in the respective countries. We do cross-marketing. For example, approximately 10% of the traffic to our auto portal in Lithuania comes from our own generalists. Other costs, as in people costs, we separately show a part of it relating to operating as a public company. This period we had AGM related legal costs for the first time, the most significant cost growth comes from audit fees. Overall, BCG costs grew 29%, the majority of this growth comes from costs relating to being a public listed company.
Without these costs, our operating cost base grew 13%. I will now move to profitability, which was highest ever. As noted earlier, EBITDA this period had 0 add-backs. EBITDA grew 16% year-over-year and EBITDA margin was 77%. As a reminder, at IPO, we were confident in sustainability of group margin prior to the impact of listed company costs. Now, prior to public listed company costs, our EBITDA margin grew to above 80%. We're highly cash generative. Cash flow from operations grew 15% to EUR 24 million. We do not capitalize any people costs. This year, in addition to usual CapEx, we acquired GetaPro websites in Latvia and Estonia. Because it was an asset deal, reported cash conversion was 92%.
If excluding GetaPro acquisition, cash conversion becomes comparable to the prior period and proves to stay strong at 99%. The upper part of this table presents a list of adjustments to our profitability measures. No adjustments done to EBITDA. The only adjustments done are non-cash and relate to historic acquisitions. These are used to get to the adjusted operating profit, and we also use these adjustments when assessing the dividend amount. In line with EBITDA, our adjusted operating profit also grew strongly at 16% year-over-year. We continue reducing the net debt and leverage. We started the period with EUR 84 million of loan and leverage of 1.7 times. Since then, in July, we acquired a service vertical, GetaPro, for EUR 1.6 million.
In October, we paid the first final dividend for financial year 2022 of EUR 0.014 per share in the amount of EUR 7 million. We reduced the loan liability by partially paying down EUR 7 million of the debt. Bought EUR 1.5 million of company shares to Employee Benefit Trust for future employee awards, and also post AGM, which was held on the 28th of September. We've started buying back company shares. We've been only doing it for one month, we bought EUR 0.4 million of shares for cancellation during the period reported on. To this date, we have bought EUR 1.3 million of shares for cancellation. At the end of the six-month period, on the 31st of October, the gross debt balance was EUR 77 million, with leverage at 1.4 times.
Going forward, we intend to use the excess cash that we generate in a year within the same year or shortly thereafter. We will continue considering M&A opportunities. We intend to return one-third of adjusted net income, which is similar to net cash and flow from operating activities each year via dividend. The board has now declared an interim dividend of EUR 0.008 per share to be paid in January. We also think that given the current market valuation of BCG, share buybacks create the potential for significant value creation for shareholders. As we do not have any particular target level of debt, as long as our leverage stays below two times, we intend to continue with buying back company shares and proceed with debt repayments from the balance of cash. Now, Simonas will guide you through the group strategic progress.
Hello, everyone. Now it's the time for the KPIs update. Lina and Justinas have touched on some of them, but it's good to repeat important things. The structure of the slides remained the same as the last time. Just as a reminder, market context is provided on the top left, C2C performance on the top right, B2C performance on the bottom right, and our lead against the competition is at the bottom left. Let's start from Autos. In first half of Y 2023, automotive market and Baltics remained stable, but still significantly lower than pre-COVID level. The car shortages and inflation keeps the fast growth on the average car price. In C2C, average revenue per active ad grew by 15%. There are two main reasons for that.
One is pricing actions we implemented, the second one is the value-based pricing, which means that the listing price is tied to the car value. The private customers listed more cars than the previous period, so we had 17% higher number of active listings. In B2C segment, average revenue per dealer grew very strongly by 22%, and the main reason was introduction of the new packages. The growth in dealer base is very modest, as you can see, because of the already very high penetration. In bottom left, you can see our lead versus closest competitor, and we are really happy that our lead in Lithuania keep growing, and now it's more than 5 times. In real estate. Real estate market is active.
I would say that normally active, while in 2022 it was abnormally hot. In the last half year, number of transaction was very similar to pre-COVID period, but the average price of the property keeps growing. The dynamics in both C2C and B2C segment is quite similar to Autos. In C2C, we directly benefited from growing prices because of the value-based pricing, plus we implemented pricing actions in the beginning of the year, and this resulted into 20% average revenue per ad growth. We observed higher number of new listings as well as the extensions, so the number of active ads grew by 8%. On the bottom right chart, you can see the strong growth of 20% of average revenue per broker. It was successful. It was a result of successful implemented new pricing and packaging.
The broker penetration is very high already, so the number of B2C clients remains stable even for the last couple of periods already. In the real estate, our competitive position is very strong. The gap between us and nearest competitor in Estonia grew even further, up to 16 times now. Jobs market remained very active, significantly more active than pre-COVID. Average wage in the first half of this calendar year grew by 14%. Unemployment rate keeps decreasing. It is still challenging for companies to find employees. Companies are willing to invest in hiring, but some of them are more conscious than a year ago in growing their teams. We grew average revenue per customer by 25%, but the customer base slightly decreased. Our job board remained a strong leader.
The lead over closest competitor is more than eight times. I would like to touch on our services sub-segment in the top right chart. It performed very well in H1. Average revenue per ad doubled. More than doubled, actually. The generalist platform performed well. Revenue grew by 13%. Our biggest generalist platform, Skelbiu.lt, grew its average revenue per listing by 15% as a result of introduction of value-based pricing and bundled packages in some of the categories, plus other pricing actions. As you know, the COVID lockdown boosted our lead in FY 2021, 2022. In H1 in 2023, our lead versus closest competitor in Lithuania is more than 18 times, which is 3x higher than pre-COVID.
Now I would like to tell a few words about the product developments in BCG. We make changes on our platforms every day. I will share some of them in the next two slides. Last six months, we were focused on developing B2C propositions and content quality. Starting from autos on the left-hand side. In Autoplius.lt, we replaced three existing dealers packages with the four new ones, providing customers with a better tailored services to suit their business. In Auto24.ee, we introduced new B2Cs with the four new ones, providing customers with a better tailored services to suit their business. In Auto24.ee, we introduced new B2C package and limited relisting. This is very important step to improve the content quality and buyer experience.
On the right-hand side, in our oneness, we updated existing B2C packages, introduced the new one, the premium package, and initiated authentication requirements for all the agents on the platform. This improves agents' credibility and prevents shared use of the single account. In KV.ee and real estate portal in Estonia, we introduced new packages for real estate developers and limited relisting for brokers, similarly to Auto24.ee. The main goal is to improve content quality and user experience again. I mentioned introduction of new packages many times already, and I want to add that we see very strong take-up in premium packages in both in autos and real estate. Let's move to jobs. CVbankas introduced a very interesting tool, a salary estimator tool.
Job seekers, market researchers, or anyone else can explore the salary levels in the different positions. It's very important. It's always very important and interesting topic for the people. I was already mentioned that in general, Skelbiu.lt implemented value-based pricing in automotive and real estate categories, which proved to be very effective on our verticals. We keep improving content quality and fraud preventions. For that, we upgraded the moderation tool. On that note, I would like to hand over back to Justinas t o finalize the presentation.
All right. Thank you, Simonas. Our growth runway is significant. We are early in our monetization journey. Our portal stake rates compared to international peers are two to three times lower. Improving our pricing and packaging will help to grow our revenue and profit in the coming years. This we consider to be our core of our growth story. In addition to this, we are developing ancillary products, particularly financial intermediation and data-related products. We have a short list of M&A targets we are constantly circling around. The Baltic economies are in healthy shape and still have many low-hanging fruits for growth. Public debt ratios are one of the lowest in EU. GDP growth for the next full year is forecasted to be positive despite possible technical recession in the first few quarters of the next year.
BCG continued to grow in soft landing economic environment since it results in more and normal selling times of automotive and real estate, and encourages customers to invest more into marketing. The outlook for our company is positive. For the aggregate of automotive, real estate, and generalist business units, the board is comfortable maintaining guidance of 15% revenue growth for the second half of the year. This builds on the outperformance during the first half of the year for these business units. For jobs and services, after the 27% growth during H1, the board anticipates a slower second half as we are starting to see some companies to take a more cautious approach to their hiring plans. We expect for the full year growth of around 15%.
The board expects the company to maintain adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year despite rising costs and high inflation. The board expects the company to maintain adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year, despite rising costs and high inflation environment and further lift the company costs. During the second half of the year, the board will continue allocating excess cash towards reducing gross debt and to the share buyback program, as well as, declare an interim dividend to be paid in January. All right, thank you for listening, for your attention. Now we are very happy to take your questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question today comes from William Packer from BNP Paribas. Your line is open.
Hi, Justinas. Hi, Lina. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got four. I'm happy to go back in the queue if that'd be better after three, but I'll fire away with four. Firstly, you've guided to 15% revenue growth for the second half for autos and real estate. And this strikes me as a little bit conservative. You've put through a 20% price increase, and from our scraping, the inventory levels on your key websites are growing 20%. Assuming we don't see a major turn in inventory, therefore I'd see upside risk. Is that the risk, or have I missed something? Secondly, could you update us on any regulatory developments in any of your key markets? We've had this Estonian property investigation, for example, and it's quite hard for us to keep a precise tabs on what's going on.
An update there'd be useful. Thirdly, a key risk for the auto classified sector heading into 2023 is the normalization of gross profits for the dealers. Could you update us as to how gross profits have developed in your key markets and how you expect car dealers to navigate those challenges? Finally, could you help us think through the split of free cash flows between debt reduction and buyback as we head forward? You know, for our modeling, that could have quite a significant impact on the EPS growth. Any help there would be very useful. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Will. I will start answering the first question with regards to our guidance and to bring a small correction, what you have said. We are guiding at 15% for the second half in aggregate for automotive, real estate, and generalists. It's likely that automotive and real estate will be slightly above that, and generalists will slightly below 15%. For the aggregate, we're guiding 15%. Secondly, the automotive and real estate are business lines are doing very well. It did very well during the first half of the year. Automotive grew 19%, real estate grew 18%. For the second half of the year, the B2C price changes will kick in, and that will have effect on our revenues.
We also need to remember that we do our pricing events annually. Also last year, we did a B2C pricing event in autumn. The comparables for the second half of the year becomes higher. We anticipate the revenue growth here, but also the comparables will be higher. The second question was.
Regulatory developments.
Regulatory, yes.
The regulatory developments.
Yes. Unfortunately, those are very slow processes, there is no update on that note currently. Just maybe to repeat ourself, we are copied on that note currently. Just maybe to repeat ourself, we are cooperating with competition authorities. Not we, but the RBB economists. RBB competition economists prepared the report regarding Estonian real estate and automotive market, about the our take rates, about the dealers' commission pool comparables to the international peers. We see there that actually our take rates are much lower compared to international peers. Our pricing, and the packaging or yield growth also correlates with our, you know, delivering and increasing value to the dealers and brokers. We are feeling optimistic with regards to these investigations.
Unfortunately, they are taking just as long as they are taking and cannot update more here. The third, with regards to dealers and brokers', gross profits. I don't know, Simonas, maybe you would like to take this one, or shall I?
I think there is no different. If you refer that, basically the dealers' profits, the gross profits depends on the mostly on the value of the vehicles. We see the rapid growth of the price of the vehicles on the market, and we don't really expect that this price will drop. First of all, the price of the new vehicles is growing. The used vehicles which are our markets, are dominated by used vehicles. The used vehicles prices are following the new ones. That's the first thing. The household incomes in the Baltics, still they grow actually. You can see the wage inflation for the last, I don't know, seven years is around 10%. People have savings, people have the money, let's say.
The households, the amount of the incomes of the households makes the difference, makes the decision of buying, you know, things. If the households' incomes are growing, then this means that it's really hard to expect the price drop on any products, basically. We think that the same as, let's say, from what we get the information from the local economists, that inflation rate will be lower than we have now, which is, you know, record high. Still we'll have inflation. We don't expect any drop in the car prices. Same basically for the properties. The third question with regards to capital allocation. Lina, maybe you would like.
Yeah, I can. Sure. As long as our leverage is below two times, we plan to continue with the same approach what we did up until now. We'll do both, return the debt and do share buybacks. Actually, at this point in time, we would like to buy shares given the valuation. You know, we would like to buy as much as we can. Based on the EPS calculation, there's bigger acceleration and on the shareholders' return with share buybacks. That's definitely what we want to do. We hear investors and the willingness for the companies to have strong balance sheets. We will continue both, paying down the debt and share buybacks.
Thanks for all the color. Maybe just to follow up on Justinas' comments around the conservatism of guidance. You mentioned the comps get harder. Just to make sure I understand properly, are you thinking of changing the timing of the H2 price rise, or will you look to raise prices at the same time? Clearly the fact that you had a significant price increase in the previous year makes comps harder, but just to check around the timing of pricing.
Yeah. So currently, we haven't scheduled the price rises for the next year. Looking from, let's say, today's perspective, we don't see why it shouldn't happen in the same schedule as this year. We haven't done the decision yet. Basically, because we just, you know, in the beginning of this half of the year, we did the decision yet. Basically, because we just, you know, in the beginning of this half of the year, we did C2C, in the end of this half year, B2C. We just went through both of the pricing events. It's just so many time yet to for the planning for the next ones.
Super. Thanks very much.
Our next question comes from Jessica Pok from Peel Hunt. The line is open.
I've just got two questions, please. The first is on jobs and services. I know you've mentioned that, for the second half, you're expecting companies to take a more cautious approach to hiring. Am I correct? If I'm correct in thinking that, I think your portals are tilted more towards blue collar versus white collar. I was wondering if you could give any color as to kind of demand and demand of jobs kind of in the Baltic region for blue collar versus white collar, and any trends there will be helpful.
The second question is just on the pricing event that you've just had for B2C. Is there any color you can give in terms of the level in which you've put through these pricing events? Is it kind of in your historical 15%, or is it closer to maybe 25%? Just any color on that would be helpful. Thank you.
Right. So maybe I will take the second part of the question. Simonas, maybe you can take the first one. With regards to price, the price increases. It was in line with our historical levels. It was from 10%-20%. We can. If we wanted to give an average, we should kind of average to 15%. It's not only the price increases because especially for a B2C, it's both pricing and packaging, because we are introducing a new packages, tailored the different sides of the dealers. We also give more prominent products for the dealers if they are choosing a more premium packages.
It's not only a straight price increase, but it's also, you know, when the customers choose our better products, we also get more leads, and we feel we are kind of giving more business to them. With regards to labor market, I can maybe just start answering that. Actually, our job vertical is not considered more to the blue-collar. It is a very broad vertical, which includes both blue-collar and then white-collar. The labor market continue to be strong.
The only, you know, I guess why we are more cautious on the second half of the year, it's, we have a quite a tough comparable for the second half of the year because, the last year, in the second half of the year, we emerged from the pandemic, from the COVID restrictions. On the other hand, currently the labor market is also very strong. If we compare it to the regular averages, you know, before the pandemic. Now we still have 50% more ads and the revenue is more than double that size. Basically for the next year, we rely on the forecast that the labor market will continue to be strong. The local economists are forecasting that the unemployment rate will be.
The local economists are forecasting that the unemployment rate will be more or less stable. There will be a salary pressure because of the higher inflation to the employers. Basically our assumptions that, you know, that our view is more cautious, but our assumptions that the labor market will be still strong.
Maybe small remark on top of that we have to not to forget actually that we have the proper blue-collar, let's say, job category on our generalist side. We are covering really broad market and the city bankers is the mix. The generalist is the blue-collar.
Okay. Thank you.
We will now answer questions received from the webcast. First question: What are the B2C price rises you put through recently? In C2C, in absolute terms, your prices still seem low relative to the cost of the items involved. Where could these get to midterm? Two, longer term, what are your aspirations for your services vertical? Could it be similar in size to other verticals?
All right. I will start answering. With regards to B2C price changes, as I mentioned, it was from 10%-20% and average 15%. As I mentioned earlier, it's not only trade price increases, but in some cases are that we are adding new packages, more tailored packages, which include more prominence products. The customer is not only, you know, get a price increase, but they are also getting a better product. Second part of the question with regards to C2C. I agree with you that actually the listing fees are very low compared to the value of the vehicle or the value of the real estate. How much bigger it can be?
It's, you know, difficult to answer, in our view, significantly. Significantly bigger. This is what we are aiming for. We are going taking annual pricing events in C2C. This year's C2C growth were the fastest. It grew 26%. Basically we see actually once we add like five years extra to the listing fee, the customer willingness to pay are very strong and there is low price sensitivity in C2C among the C2C customers.
The second question was about our aspiration towards the service verticals.
Yes.
Maybe I will start. Yeah.
Okay.
Right. How we look at this, let's say. The service vertical is extremely wide and broad. When you think about the services, there are so many of them, so much, and they are not on internet. Quite a lot of them, they are not even on the internet. Now, it could be, you know, like cleaning, construction, transportation, carpentry, I mean anything. Teaching, you know, some photography, photographers and so on. We see this segment as the, as very, as very wide and very, let's say, capable to acquire to invest into the marketing. You know, they are businesses, either small or mid-sized businesses, and they can pay for the customers they are getting. We really believe that this could be similar to other verticals. In size, I mean, similar to other verticals.
The good thing, that market itself in the Baltics, especially, as you know, our the level, let's say, of the living standards, they are increasing and the incomes are increasing. People tend to buy more and more services instead of doing something themselves. You know, just small things. We believe that this might be very significant and similar to other verticals.
Maybe to add that actually it's all around the world, the service verticals are.
We believe that this might be very significant and similar to other verticals.
All around the world, the service verticals are expanding. Basically, many classified companies see the service vertical as a new emerging vertical. Basically, if we look how many suppliers are there and how many services, you know, are in our lives, basically, end of every day, we need some kind of services. We think that it can be definitely, you know, as big as some other our verticals. Although it would take time, I guess. You know, in our projections, it will take, you know, three, four or five years. The way it's expanding, it's doubling during almost every year. It's, you know, it looks very promising.
Our next question comes from Marco, from Alpha Star. Is the below average growth in advertising from a weakening online advertising market, or is there something else to consider?
It's a good question. I think that, maybe to begin with, advertising revenues, we don't consider it to be our core revenue. We are not focusing on it. What does it mean? Basically, we're not creating new positions or we are, you know, all the time waiting, does it, wait, is it a more kind of better to have a position or to have a better user experience? We don't consider it just, you know, the advertising contributes only 6% of our revenue. It's growing, but like single digits. We see a much bigger potential in the core classifieds revenue, which is C2C and B2C. maybe just short would-
Yeah, just the technical ones is the technical, let's say, context or technical environment or legal environment does not support online advertising. Because, you know, because of the privacy protection, GDPR and other, laws, let's say. They, they kind of, limit basically the, the possibilities of using online advertising. You know, all the cookies consent, you know, third party. We have to comply with those. These are shrinking basically the market of online advertising.
From this perspective, we feel that we are very fortunate that, this part of revenue is very minor in our portfolio.
Our next question comes from Harry Weltman from Berenberg. One, how should we interpret the minor declines in Auto24's national market share multiple since full year 2022? Two, please could you expand on the breakdown between pricing impact and volume expected in the 15% guidance? Three, as of today, could you remind us of the number of shares bought back and how that relates to targeted buyback?
All right. maybe, Lina, you would like to start from the third q uestion.
Yeah, I can. Up until today, we bought 1.3 million of company shares for cancellation. We don't have a particular communicated target of number of shares to be bought. Currently, the goal is actually, given the valuation of BCG and given the fact that we're below two times in leverage, the goal is actually to buy as much as we can. We are limited by rules such as Safe Harbor, and we comply with those. Simply saying, we're just currently buying as much as we can.
All right. I can answer about the trends in automotive vertical in Estonia. I think that for the audience, it's very important to remember that portals like Auto24.ee, they are super dominant portals. Basically Auto24.ee, the lead is close to 30 times. They are one of the most popular sites in within the respective country. For example, if you know, once you are 25 or 30 times bigger compared to your close competitor, your competitor gains one user. Basically, to maintain the same lead, you need to get 30 more users. In fact, we are so dominant and so penetrated, there are no additional 30 users on the market. It's not a zero-sum game, the competition.
Actually, small movements, once you are at least more than 10 times bigger, and in, you know, the 24 case, they are more than 20 times bigger, it doesn't matter, these kind of movements. It doesn't reflect the changes in the market share. The most important movements within our portfolio and looking at our leads are in Autoplius.lt in Lithuania, where we increased from 4.4 to 5.6x. Even though kind of looking by numbers, it's not a big improvement. Actually in the market, in terms of the market share, it's a huge improvement. Just maybe to explain to the audience, actually the movements once you are above 20 times, these are more like arithmetics.
Also it can depend on, you know, since we are using open force data to calculate, it also can, you know, reflect some small changes into the kind of data collection methodology by the open source data. Basically, you know, this is not where you should kind of be focusing. The much more important, you know, the lead is the one we achieved through the last few years in Autoplius.lt in Lithuania and CVbankas in Lithuania, also real estate portals in Estonia. Those are much more significant gains. The second part of the question, how much the growth is reflected in volumes and how much through the yield improvements. This is a very general question.
To answer it very precisely, we need to go through each business line individually. It's not very kind of easy to give a generalized question. To make it maybe short answer, the volumes are growing in single digits. The last few years, especially in real estate and in automotive, we had the headwind because the economy was booming. The selling periods were so short, and there were lack of, you know, cars on the market, et cetera. Basically we had this headwind in terms of the inventory. Now we have a tailwind when the selling times are more normalizing, so we see the growth in terms of the volumes.
In the future, we should be expecting a single-digit growth year because of our platforms already being so dominant. The yields, we are aiming to grow our yields through the pricing. We expecting a single-digit growth year because of our platforms already being so dominant. The yields, we are aiming to grow our yields through the pricing and packaging events double digits. We are aiming with the 15% annually pricing events, so double digits.
As a reminder, to ask any further questions, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. We have another recent question from Silas Hope at Numis. Is the interest rate on facility fee fully hedged?
We pay margin plus Euribor, plus one month Euribor. As I mentioned earlier, looking at the EPS impact from interest costs and from share buybacks, currently it makes more economic rationale to emphasize the share buybacks. We're continuing with both.
This concludes our Q&A. I hand over to Justinas Šimkus, CEO, for any final remarks.
All right. Thank you. Thank you all for listening and for your very, very good questions. Looking forward to see you during our full year results announcement.
Today's call is now concluded. I'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.
Thank you.