To the Hemnet Q1 2025 report presentation. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions-and-answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound five on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers: CEO Jonas Gustafsson, CFO Anders Örnulf, and IR Ludvig Segelmark. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to this 2025 Q1 release call for Hemnet Group. My name is Jonas Gustafsson, and I'm the Group CEO of Hemnet. With me, here on my side at our headquarters in Stockholm, I have our Chief Financial Officer, Anders Örnulf, and our Head of Investor Relations, Ludvig Segelmark. As most of you know, I joined Hemnet in early February, so I've been around for roughly two and a half months, which has been a very intense and rewarding period of time. During that period, I've had the opportunity and the privilege to meet quite a few of you on this call, and I very much look forward to meeting the rest of you and find a good way of working together in the future. With that said, let's kick this one off, and let's start with the agenda on the next slide.
As you can see on the agenda slide here, I would like to take the opportunity to start off with a few initial observations from my perspective regarding our market position and our strategy ahead. That will be followed by an overview of our performance during the first quarter. Thereafter, Anders Örnulf will cover the financial details, and I will get back in the end to wrap this up. As always, there will be opportunities to ask questions at the end of the presentation. Today's session will be moderated by our operator, so please follow the operator's instructions to ask questions through the provided telephone dial-in details. Let's move on to the next slide. As this is my first quarterly presentation as CEO for Hemnet, I would like to start by a brief introduction of myself before going into the quarterly results.
To start, I most recently come from a background in the TV and media industry, where I spent the last decade in various leadership roles and positions. Most recently, I was the Group CEO for Allente, a leading pan-Nordic TV operator that was founded back in 2020 through the merger of Viasat and Canal Digital on the back of a quite significant synergy case. Allente has been a fantastic journey and a very rewarding personal experience, where we got the opportunity to transform two legacy companies into standalone business and at the same time extracting annual synergies of close to SEK 1 billion on an EBITDA level. Prior to Allente, I had various CEO and leadership positions at Nordic Entertainment Group and MTG, spanning from digital transformation, advertising sales in TV and radio, pay TV operations, digital streaming services, but also content production.
I must say, even though I come from a different industry and a different past, I do see a lot of similarities with my past experiences and Hemnet. At the end of the day, running a pay TV operator business and a property portal have quite a few things in common. It is all about ensuring that you have the right and most attractive content to appeal to the users and create a best-in-class consumer experience. In my past roles, I have worked with large customer bases with more than a million paying subscribers. At Hemnet, it is of course different, but we have close to two million weekly recurring users that are definitely sort of a logical overlap from the TV business experience.
The value creation comes from creating engaging user experiences and making users return to the service as often as possible, creating value across the value chain for various stakeholders and commercial management. How do you monetize on this dynamic? I definitely see that the past experience is highly relevant also for Hemnet. For now and for today, that was a very brief introduction about myself, and again, I look forward to working together with all of you in the future. Now, I would like to spend a few minutes on my initial observations around Hemnet's position and our strategy ahead. Please move to slide number four. Our point of departure is very strong, and the team has done a fantastic job over the last years to continuously develop and to professionalize this company.
Hemnet is the unrivaled leader and holds a stronghold position for the housing market in Sweden. If we just go through some of the main highlights from my perspective. First of all, in 2024, we had almost three million unique weekly users at Hemnet, a number that has been growing compared to the year before and a pure testimony of our power position. Secondly, when looking at external metrics, we grew our reach by 5% during 2024, and we rank as the third largest commercial website in Sweden, only behind the main newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen. From my perspective, this is a fantastic position and something to be very proud of. Thirdly, if we look at the third dimension, we see on average our users engaged with us more than three times per week, adding up to more than 40 million sessions per month.
We saw a slight decrease in sessions per user during 2024. This follows a clear pattern that we have seen over the last year, similar to many other digital services who saw a peak during the pandemic years. Sessions are an important metric for us as it shows how often our users come back. Therefore, the traffic development will be a clear priority and a clear focus also for us going forward. For us at Hemnet, as a property platform, the most important metric is, of course, that we generate the highest possible engagement per listing. Engaging with property listings is the main reason why millions of visitors come back to Hemnet every week. It is also engagement of the listings that ultimately create potential bidders and buyers. As of 2024, we generated approximately 16x more visits per listing compared to the second largest property site in Sweden.
If we then kindly could turn to slide number five and Hemnet's strategy. I want to take this opportunity to reiterate our communicated strategy: to engage consumers, to grow sellers, and to develop our B2B offering. This overarching strategic ambition remains the same, and we're fully committed to execute on that strategy. We start on the left-hand side with the consumer experience. We want to increase engagement among consumers and strengthen loyalty across the property journey. A key part in maintaining growth momentum is by continuously enriching the user experience and increasing loyalty beyond the buy and sell moment, ensuring that we have the most relevant and far-reaching supply will also continue to play a key role going forward. We then move on to the seller's perspective. We want to continue to optimize revenue through a balance of product, packaging, payment, and price.
With the launch of Hemnet Max, we're in great position and in great shape to offer every single seller package that suits their specific needs. Onwards, we will continue to add value to our different packages while offering flexible payment options for our sellers. Thirdly, for our business partners, we want to continue to grow our product offering to better cater for the needs of real estate agents and our other important partners across the industry. If we then kindly could move to slide number six to sum up my initial observations and our plan ahead. We have a very strong foundation and an excellent point of departure that we should leverage in the future to continue to build the Hemnet success story. As previously stated, Hemnet has a truly unique market position in Sweden.
Millions of people visit our website every week, and we want to make sure that these come back as often as possible. This means that we need to continue to work hard to ensure that we can deliver the best possible user experience and that we never take our market position for granted. There is still large potential in our home market being Sweden and in our core business. I do see a number of attractive opportunities across our core business, and I'm eager to continue to evaluate and execute on these going forward. I'm also confident that we have the right team in place to grasp these opportunities. The changes in our organization and in our operating model that we've done over the last years have put us in a much better position.
Our business is to a large extent a relationship business towards the real estate industry, and I can't stress enough how important our strong relationship with agents and partners is for our continued success. Also in this area, I think there's improvement potential, and we can improve as we move ahead. With that said, we will need to continue to invest in our business going forward. Hemnet is a fast-paced, fast-growing company, and in order to continue, we need to invest in our product. We also need to ensure that we continue with our marketing investments to solidify our strong market position. This means that we expect that the cost increases that we saw in Q1 will likely continue ahead. With that said, let's move on to the quarterly update and slide number seven and eight.
We continue on the strong momentum that we saw during 2024 and started off 2025 on a very high note. In the first quarter, our net sales grew by 30%, driven by strong development within our property seller segment. Our ARPL growth, average revenue per listing, amounted to almost 37%, driven by a continued high demand for value-added services. The penetration towards our plus and premium packages continued to increase. Listings grew slightly in Q1 and were up with 0.2% compared to the last year, with the underlying market activity remained at good levels with an increasing number of transactions and higher average prices. EBITDA grew by almost 32%, leading to an EBITDA margin of 47.9%, which is 0.7 percentage points higher than Q1 last year. The increased profitability is driven by strong sales growth and operating leverage in the underlying business.
On 1st April, we launched Hemnet Max, which represents a milestone for Hemnet. In relation to the Max launch, we have also upgraded and improved the functionality across all our packages. Bas, Plus, and Premium have seen considerable improvements. From an overall perspective, the Max launch went well from an operational dimension, and we very much look forward to the journey ahead where Max is an important growth driver for us over the coming years. Now, let's turn to page nine for some further comments on our financial development. Net sales amounted to SEK 329 million, up by 29.6% compared to the same period last year. As most of you are well aware, we have seasonality in our business, and the first quarter is typically the weakest. However, with this strong start of 2025, we are well positioned to deliver strong performance also for the rest of the year.
EBITDA grew by 31.7% to SEK 158 million, representing an EBITDA margin of 47.9%. We're very glad and proud to see that we're able to increase profitability while continuing to invest in the business. Anders will provide some additional color and some additional details around these dynamics further on in the presentation. Now, let's turn to page 10 and our ARPL development. In Q1, ARPL grew by almost 37% year- on- year, driven primarily by a continued strong demand for Hemnet Premium, where conversion continued to increase in Q1. As highlighted in previous quarters, we experienced a step change in our conversion rates following the launch of the new compensation model in July last year, which is a direct impact on agents embracing the new model and more actively recommending our higher packages and leaning in.
A gentle reminder to all of us and a clarification, Hemnet Max was launched after the first quarter and thus has no impact on the ARPL growth in the reported numbers. Now, if we please could move to slide number 11 for a few comments regarding our listing volumes. On the left-hand side, you'll see a combined chart showing published listings per quarter and yearly, as well as the year-on-year change between different quarters. Listings grew by 0.2% in Q1 and amounted to 41,200. On the last 12-month basis, published listings grew by 3.3%, and the number has been quite stable over the past year, as you can see in the graph. The number of actual transactions grew in the quarter, but listing times remain longer than historical averages and are increasing, which adds to the overall supply situation.
Looking forward, we expect the market to show some caution during the ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, driving continued high supply of listings and also extended time to market. Now, let's turn to page number 12 for some additional comments around the launch of Hemnet Max. During the quarter, our team continued to develop and improve Hemnet's offering and user experience. A particular focus and the highlight was Hemnet Max, which was launched on 1st April. The package is designed for sellers seeking maximum visibility and includes unique features such as exposure on Hemnet homepage, targeted communication to potential buyers, and enhanced visibility for the listing agent. The package was offered at a discounted price for the first two weeks in order for sellers and agents to try the package and its new features.
We're still in the early days, and it's difficult to draw any conclusions yet, but we expect Hemnet Max to be a long-term growth driver for Hemnet for the coming years. Now, if we please move to slide number 13 to highlight some additional product updates from the quarter. In addition to working on Hemnet Max, we continue to deliver product updates and enhance the user experience. In Q1, we made it easier for property sellers to change agent on a listing without having to pay for a new listing. Enabling property sellers to change agent is an important and highly requested feature from both sellers and agents, and we're happy to have that in place. We've also done a few important updates when it comes to the consumer experience at Hemnet.
One of the most important changes in user experience is that we've added a swipe-enabled image library in the result list. This change drives a significant improvement in the user experience. With this change, we see the number of people clicking into the actual listing will drop slightly, but the quality and the intent will be much higher. We've also added a number of highly requested features to our listings, including listing times on Bas now visible in the result list and a lot of more property data being available on each listing. We've increased our brand and marketing efforts during the first quarter. As I stated before, we think it's important to invest in marketing to reinforce Hemnet's message as the leading property portal in Sweden and never take our market position for granted.
In March, we went live with a large brand campaign highlighting the importance of reaching the correct audience when selling and buying a property. We've also added and continued to up our efforts across digital channels during the start of the year with promising results so far. On the business-to-business side, we've adopted new ways of working by our sales team, where we are building stronger relationships with the real estate agents across Sweden. In Q1, agent interactions were up with more than 50% compared to the same period last year. Our relationship with the agent community is the backbone of our success. With that said, I would like to end this section and hand over to Anders for the financial update starting on page number 14.
Thank you, Jonas. Let's turn to page 15 in the financial summary for the first quarter.
We have already presented the number of published listings on the bottom left, which aligns with a typical Q1. With that context, let's focus on the financial result Q1 2025. Once again, we delivered strong growth on both the top line and the bottom line during the quarter, and I'll walk you through the key drivers behind this performance. Starting with net sales on the left-hand side of this slide, we recorded a 30% increase to SEK 329 million. As Jonas mentioned earlier, we were particularly pleased with the strong performance in the property seller's revenue, which grew by 37%. We will dive into the other revenue streams on the next slide. Another noteworthy point is the average listing time on a rolling 12-month basis increased from 42 days in Q1 2024 to 46 days in Q4 2024 and now 47 days in Q1 2025.
The year-on-year effect of the five-day increase is -SEK 5 million in revenue. The sequential effect of the one additional day from Q4 to Q1 is -SEK 2 million in revenue for the quarter. To smooth out seasonality effects, we recommend tracking ARPL growth on a rolling 12-month basis as shown on page 10 of the presentation. Our EBITDA for the quarter came in at SEK 158 million, representing an increase of 32% compared to the same period last year. We will explore the EBITDA development in more detail on the next slide. The EBITDA margin reached 47.9%, an increase of 0.7 percentage points compared to Q1 last year, primarily driven by strong underlying operational leverage. This margin expansion is particularly impressive given the shift in sales mix.
Net sales from property sellers again grew significantly, while net sales from our B2B customers, which typically carry close to 100% marginal profit, declined by 3%. Additionally, while commissions and compensation to real estate agents increased in absolute terms, they declined as a percentage of property seller revenue in the first quarter. Even as we continue to see higher recommendation rates and improved Bas conversion, the effective commission rate decreased from 29.9% in Q1 to 29.7% in Q1 2025, partly explained by the fixed admin fee of SEK 600. We will discuss the cost structure in more detail shortly, but it is important to note that our ability to generate cash remains strong, with cash conversion landing at 98% on a rolling 12-month basis. Leverage came in at 0.5x rolling 12-month EBITDA, an improvement from the previous quarter and even 0.3x lower than in Q1 2024.
This reduction is especially encouraging given that we continue to actively execute on our capital allocation strategy, including an attractive share buyback program. Our headcount for the quarter increased by just one compared to the same period last year. However, it's important to note a bit of a technical nuance. Last year, a larger number of employees were on parental leave and temporarily replaced by substitutes. That inflated the reported headcount, even though it didn't necessarily reflect an increase in the actual number of hours worked last year versus this year. With that overview, let's turn to our revenues by segment on page 16 to take a closer look at the Q1 figures. Similar to recent quarters, key net sales growth again were seller revenue. The B2B segment saw negative growth of -3%, reflecting a continued trend we've observed for some time.
The display advertising environment remains challenging with reduced spending across all customer groups. Again, that's related to display advertising. This is driven by broader macroeconomic pressures as advertising budgets shrink across the market, especially a property developer, and further impacted slightly fewer visits per user compared to last year, which affects the number of impressions. On a more positive note, we continue to see strong momentum from real estate agents. Demand for Hemnet's unique offerings remained robust, fueling growth in this product area for the second consecutive quarter. With that, let's move to our EBITDA bridge on page 17 to dive deeper into the Q1 figures. We have already covered what has driven the top line for the quarter, so let's go through the cost. SEK 23 million higher compensation to agents due to the reason mentioned at the summary slide, more engaged agents, higher Bas conversion.
Again, the effective commission ended at 29.7%. Other external expenses for the quarter followed a similar pattern as in 2024, driven by increased activity across the board. This includes intensified marketing efforts, coming back to what Jonas said, such as increased digital marketing, production of new brand marketing campaigns, as well as preparation and launch of Hemnet Max. We continue with higher investment in product development that you can see in licenses and consulting. In total, this cost item increased by 32% during the quarter. Personnel cost increased by 17%. In addition to salary inflation, it is explained by the full impact of several leadership and few organizational changes made during 2024, which are now fully visible in the Q1 year-on-year comparison. In total, this adds up to the absolute EBITDA growth in the quarter of SEK 38 million, or 32%.
Moving on to page 18 and some spotlight on the cash flow. Let's start with the graph on the left, which shows a rolling 12-month figure for free cash flow. The ability to consistently grow cash flow strongly validates both our business performance and our operating model. LTM figure now at SEK 740 million, the primary driver, of course, being operating cash flow. In the first quarter, we repurchased 325,000 shares amounting to SEK 119 million. This was at higher pace than in Q4, but should be viewed in the context of the total mandate of SEK 450 million approved by the 2024 AGM. The current buyback program will continue until the 2025 AGM. Board of Directors has proposed a dividend of SEK 1.70 per share, up from SEK 1.20 last year. This proposal marks an impressive increase of 42% compared to the previous year.
This aligns well with the company's dividend policy, representing approximately one-third of earnings per share. As previously communicated, Hemnet remains committed to return excess cash to shareholders through a combination of ongoing share buybacks and dividends. Moving on to net debt, it is important to consider this in the context of our growing EBITDA, which ensures a stable net debt to EBITDA ratio. As you can see, this ratio has remained steady for some time and is now gradually decreasing, driven by the strong cash flow. Notably, it remains well below our financial target of under 2x. In summary, a very strong financial start of the year. I want to hand over to Jonas for a summary on page 19.
Thank you, Anders. Let's move on to the final slide and the summary on slide number 20.
From my perspective, to summarize, Hemnet has a unique market position with great opportunities linked to the core business. I do see a number of attractive opportunities across our core business in both B2C and in our B2B offering. Secondly, we had a strong start of the year with strong growth and increased profitability. Thirdly, Swedish property market was stable in Q1, but still experiencing some challenging market conditions with all-time high supply of listings and extended time on market. Our new seller package, Hemnet Max, was launched by 1st April after Q1 ended. In connection with the launch, we also made upgrades to our other packages, further increasing the breadth and the diversification of our product offering. Lastly, Hemnet is a fast-growing company, and we will continue to make investments in product development and growth initiatives ahead to solidify our strong market position.
With that said, and with that, let's now open up for the Q&A.
To ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Ed Young from Morgan Stanley . Please go ahead.
Good morning. I've got two questions if that's okay. The first one, in your statement, you talked about macro uncertainty. You talked about both increased uncertainty concerning the world economy, but also in recent months, you've seen signs of recovery more for the published listings. Just to be clear, do you think there's been any real impact on the current uncertainty on the market? If so, what kind of factors do you think could be affected?
How do you expect that to develop in the coming months from what you're seeing now? Second of all, I just wondered if you could elaborate a bit more on Max. Obviously, you've launched it. It looks like it's about sort of 2% uptake. Is that in line with what you were hoping for or expecting in the early weeks? I appreciate it is early. Perhaps more broadly, can you talk about the timeline you expect for a new seller package to develop towards maturity? What sort of timeline are you expecting to see this develop over? Thank you.
Thanks a lot, Ed. Let me start with the first one.
Regarding the overall macro situation and the sort of some degree of uncertainty that we've seen, I think if we just look at 2025, I think January, February, and March started off on a quite sort of positive note, and we saw more housing transactions happening during the quarter. There is some additional uncertainty that we see and that we hear out there. However, I think if we take a step back, it's fair to say that the most important factor that we know for a fact that is impacting Hemnet is, at the end of the day, interest rates. Sort of based on what we see right now, I think we have a quite positive outlook for the interest rates going forward.
It is also fair to say that if we look at Hemnet and our history, we know that we have a product that is working both in a strong and in a weak market. I do not expect any major changes to that. Of course, it is very hard to predict also for me and for us to expect and foresee what is coming down the line. We are positive given the fact that we know that we have experience with the product that is working. That was the first one. The second one, Ed, when it comes to Max, it is fair to say that the average listing times before selling, as Anders also referred to, is 47 days. Max has now been active 24 days, so it is very difficult to draw any conclusions.
From my perspective, I'm extremely happy and also proud that the operational launch went well. It is a large undertaking from our perspective to launch a new tier and a new sort of level to our product structure and our proposition. You should remember and keep in mind that last time that we launched Plus and Premium, that was back in 2019 and 2020. Over time, we've gradually seen those products becoming more and more important for us. Max is not something that is sort of going to decide the results for Q2 or Q3 or only in 2025. This is a long-term sustainable growth driver for us at Hemnet.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Georg Attling from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead. Good morning. I have three questions, if that's okay.
Starting on the cost side here, first, commissions to agents, it dropped compared to Q4 in perspective to listing-related sales. Despite upgrades increasing, could you just help us understand that dynamic?
Okay, I can start with that because that's a fairly short one to answer. Because you're absolutely right. If you look at the second half year of last year, the first two quarters with the new compensation model, we had effective compensation at 30.4. And as you mentioned, we had 29.7 in this quarter. The main reason is the fixed component in the design of the new model. That's the one. That's the main reason why the effective commission is actually lower than the second half year. It's not related to what's happening in ARPL or our Bas conversion. As I said in my presentation, it's actually growing again.
Okay. Second question on cost.
If we look at OpEx, excluding commissions, slowing a bit, that growth, 22% from 27% in the last two quarters. You said that you want to continue to grow this. Would that be at a slower rate in the remainder of the year, or how should we think about that?
Yeah, we actually said in the Q4 report that you could expect OpEx growth figures to be lower than 2024. It will, of course, vary between the quarters, not only depending on what we do this year, but also what we did last year, right, since it is a comp figure. With that said, we stick to that comment that we said in the Q4 that this year will be lower than last year.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. A gradual decline in the growth rate of OpEx throughout the year, is that fair to assume?
That's what you can expect for 2025.
Okay. I'm looking here at the volumes in April. They look quite strong, but I know the figures that we see on the website are not like for like anymore. Could you just give us the like for like volume here in April versus last year?
Georg, Jonas here. Just a question. When it comes to the volumes that you refer to, is that the listings that you refer to?
Yeah. Yeah.
I think April has started off on a sort of expected level, and we're happy with the levels that we currently are at. What you should keep in mind, Georg, is that there's definitely some seasonality in the March and the April figures, given the fact that Easter was in Q1 last year and in March.
In April 2025, we had Easter, right? Easter is typically something where we see quite large swings, both on the upside and the downside. Those weeks are quite volatile. April has started off on good levels.
Okay. That's all I had. Thanks.
Thanks.
The next question comes from William Packer from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi, there. Many thanks for taking my questions. Three from me, please. Firstly, the upsell of Premium has been a big success over the last 12 months-18 months. There have been a number of drivers, the efficacy of the product, the new commission model, but perhaps most importantly, the relisting feature. If listing time stabilized at this high level, could the impetus for upgrades fall? If we do see an acceleration in the speed of sale, could we see some spin-down risk? Second question.
Speaking to Swedish agents and your peers, occasionally hear that the price point of Hemnet can act as a disincentive for vendors to list on Hemnet for an initial period, and sometimes alternative platforms are used. I understand one of your competitors released some market research suggesting your share of transactions has fallen, and that trend is accelerating. Could you outline how you see things on that front? I am sure you disagree, but it would be good to have some color there. Final question. Jonas has been the business. Many, many strengths to the business. Within your remarks today, there was quite a lot of talk of investment in marketing and people and product, and consensus has more than 100 basis points per annum EBITDA margin expansion for the next three years. Is that consistent with your message? Thank you.
Good morning, William.
I'll take the question. When it comes to Premium, you're absolutely right. We've seen a fantastic development not only during the first quarter in 2025, but also during 2024, and especially during Q3 and Q4. I think you're absolutely right that the sort of market dynamic that we've seen with high supply levels and also longer sort of listing times have benefited Premium because the strongest feature being the relistings is definitely something that has been very attractive for that market dynamic. However, I think that's not the only feature that is strong for Premium. I expect that even in a market that would become a bit warmer and quicker, the Premium product has many strong features, and the relistings is a way to differentiate, right?
It is a way to get high up in the results list. I do expect that. You should also keep in mind that we have a quite high degree of Premium. It is also important for the sellers to ensure that they invest to get the realistic features and the other features that Premium has. When it comes to the price dimension, I know for a fact which report you refer to. It was published by one of our competitors and the state-owned bank, SBAB. That survey suggested that roughly 25% of properties would be sold outside Hemnet. What you should keep in mind is that they published a similar survey a year ago, so in early 2024, that suggested that only 78% of the listings were sold on Hemnet.
If I ignore the survey that was conducted based on 200 real estate agents and instead look at the real data, the hard facts, I know for a fact that during that period of time, it was not 78% that was sold on Hemnet. It's very close to 9 out of 10 properties were sold on Hemnet during that period. I would sort of be a bit cautious and a bit careful by interpreting the reports coming from our competitors. Thirdly, around investments going forward, I think if we look at our business, we have a very strong market position today, as you all know. I think it's important that we don't take that position for granted. When it comes to developing our position, strengthening our position, it's important that we continue to invest into the business, and especially around product features.
I think one very positive observation that I also highlighted as part of my summary and part of my presentation is that I do see a lot of opportunities in our core business. There's a lot of potential in different product development areas that would strengthen our position going forward. Hemnet has been, I wouldn't say inactive, but sort of very sort of low in terms of marketing investments in the past. I think we see a need that we need to increase those. That is also what we started during the first part of this year, as you can see in the Q1 numbers. We also see very positive results coming from that. I think Anders elaborated a bit on the OpEx cost development on the previous question. Hopefully that answers your questions, William.
That's super helpful. Thank you very much for the detailed answer.
The next question comes from Eirik Rafdal from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, team. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got a couple. Jonas, just start a bit talking towards how you think around potentially accelerating the pace of product development a bit, and then maybe particularly on the B2B side. Also link to that, do you feel that you've got the right setup in terms of people to kind of rejuvenate the B2B revenue line? That would be my first question. My second question is on time on site. You say 47 days today. I think peak COVID, if I remember correctly, it was down in 40, something like that. Longer term, let's say over the last 5 years or 10 years, how does the 47 days where we're at today kind of stack up versus the historical average? Thank you.
Good morning, Eirik.
I'll take the first one, and then Anders will cover the second one. When it comes to pace on product development, I think there's, from my perspective, you always want to do more in a shorter period of time. I think there's something around sort of the way of working here internally that we're now trying to jack up the pace a bit on. When it comes to the team, I think we've done a lot of changes during 2024 before I joined Hemnet. I think both on the team and the organizational side, we've definitely sort of strengthened that. Also, just a comment on the way of working, we changed our operating model and our organizational structure quite a lot during the last year. I think we should be able to reap the benefits of that now we move ahead into this year.
When it comes to B2B, I think B2B is one product development area, but it's also as relevant for B2C. It's not standalone just on the B2B side. I think on B2B, there's definitely more potential in developing products to solve the daily challenges and the daily issues that the real estate agent has. That's an area where I wouldn't say that we've underinvested, but there's definitely many problems and support that we can bring to the market. I'm very positive around that area. When it comes to the second question, Eirik, I would just hand over to Anders to provide an answer on that one.
Sure. Hi, Eirik. You're absolutely right. The year after the post-pandemic super hot market in Sweden, we were actually down to two weeks average listing time, which that figure is insane, right?
When I joined, we talk about what's a normal view. When we plan, we talk about 25 days-30 days, and that's the view that we think is a normal, or before the pandemic at least, was a normal average listing time. As you said, now we see 47 days is LTM. For us, it doesn't really matter, right? Because we get the revenue otherwise. I mean, I believe that the agents themselves would benefit most from shorter sales cycles and a bit of a lower supply, easier to match seller and buyer. We don't know how the trend will go. I would like it to go down a bit because then everyone's life will be easier. To be honest, we don't know. When it comes to our Q results coming forward, it will not have a huge impact. I hope that answers your question.
That's great.
Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it.
Question comes from Raymond Kay from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Good morning. A couple of questions from me. First one, sort of regarding the number of listings on your site that we can access. It deviated quite a bit, almost 3.5% against reported listings. And this is unusually high, I believe. Generally, it's somewhere around 0.5%. Could you help us understand what is behind this and whether this is sort of a new level of deviation that we should be keeping in mind going forward?
Hi, Raymond. Ludvig here. I can take that answer, that question. As Jonas alluded to in the presentation, we added a feature which makes it easier for sellers to change agents on their listings during the quarter.
That had an effect on the statistics website, which you are referring to, where a number of listings were actually calculated twice, essentially. That had an effect of 600 listings in February and 600 listings in March. We actually had a note on the website that said that, but I recognize that a few of the analysts might have missed that going into earnings. Going forward, we have actually just released a new statistics site, which shows the same definition in listing numbers as we have in the financial reports on a monthly basis. Hopefully going forward, that will not be an issue. I hope that answers your question.
Yeah. Very, very good. When it comes to pricing, buyers are offered prices based on their location and the price of the object they are selling.
Do you think there's any reasoning behind maybe segmenting the pricing even further, say, based on property type, or is this anything that you think is valuable to do, or is anything other than price and location sort of negligible in terms of determining what the buyer might pay for an ad?
Raymond, you're absolutely right. We have a dynamic pricing model, which is essentially, per your point, based on two main sort of axes, location and the listing value. I think when it comes to that model, that is definitely something that we are continuously working on. One reflection from my side is that there's more sophistication that could be added to that model. I think, per your point, having more granular data would allow us to also find additional value creation coming from that. We're on it. We're looking at it.
That's definitely something that is a sort of key value driver for us also going forward, as it's been in the past.
Thanks. Just one final one. Regarding Hemnet Max, what do you think is the sort of biggest attraction about it or USP for customers? Is it the targeted advertising? If so, maybe you could explain a bit more how it works.
I think targeted advertising is one dimension. I think from my perspective, it's essentially sort of there's many different sort of features, but the key highlight from my perspective would be number one, and that might be quite an obvious one, but you're getting a larger exposure that is definitely sort of increasing the visibility. We can see also it's driving engagement. That's number one.
Secondly, I think it's easy to, when you think about the new product features, to only think about what it adds for a potential seller. I think Max has a unique component that also is adding value to the real estate agent. Their sort of ability to market themselves and the brand that they're associated to is increasing. I think you shouldn't underestimate that value. We know for a fact that the competition out there among real estate agents is high. Finding ways to differentiate and marketing yourself is definitely something that is worth to be mentioned also in this sense. When it comes to, and I think you're absolutely right, the sort of the targeted communication is a new feature.
That means that based on the customer base or the register that we do have internally at Hemnet, we can slice and dice the data and try to attract potential buyers also sort of without or outside the specific search result. It is a booster when it comes to getting more and additional buyers.
That's very helpful. Thank you so much for those answers. I'll get back in line.
Thanks, Raymond.
The next question comes from Nikola Kalanoski from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, gentlemen. Just looking for some clarification on commission expenses. I guess the question's mostly aimed at Anders. Firstly, Anders, could you perhaps help clarify whether there's any accounting effect to consider in the administration and commission compensation item that was around SEK 83 million?
Basically, I'm wondering if there's an effect similar to the one you discuss on revenue due to average listing duration, for example. I hope that's clear.
Sometimes these questions are hard to answer, but this one is easy. No. There are no accounting to the costs and commissions are matched to the revenue. The actual figure is linked to the actual revenue in the quarter. Nothing there.
Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Just another clarification. You mean that the variable component in the SEK 83 million in admin and commission, that would be based on the listings that are recognized for revenue, if I understand you correctly, in this particular quarter? Yeah. It's not based on the number of published listings in Q1, right? Yeah.
Nope.
It's the number of listings in the quarter for the office, and we match it to how many recommendations and purchases of Plus and Premium in the quarter. Same quarter.
Yeah. All right. That's crystal clear. Wonderful. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. No more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
First of all, many thanks for participating and tuning into this session today. As I said in my introduction, I've had the opportunity to meet quite a few of you on this call and very much look forward to meet the rest of you as we move ahead and find a good way of working together.
With that, we'll conclude this quarterly release call for Hemnet Group and have a fantastic day and a good weekend when you get there.