Leading property listings website realestate.com.au all but doubled its first-half earnings and revenue as more home vendors abandon tradition newspaper property advertising.
REA Group posted a 98% leap in interim net profit to $5.7 million compared with the previous corresponding period to 31 December 2006.
REA managing director Simon Baker declared the result marked a natural growth of the online real estate advertising business.
“Revenues are growing because, from an Australian perspective, more and more agents are spending money online to advertise properties,” Baker said.
Revenue grew 95% to $48.1 million as operating expenses rose to $39.3 million.
Baker revealed that web traffic across all sites averaged 4.7 million unique browsers per month during the six months — representing a 65% increase over the half-year ending 31 December 2005.
In January 2007 alone, web traffic increased to a “historic high” of 6.1 million unique browsers.
REA’s Australian sites – realestate.com.au grew to 3.7 million browsers; realcommercial.com.au to 177,000 browsers; and recently acquired Propertylook 65,000 browsers.
Property Listings across all REA sites increased to 731,002 listings in December 2006 — 43%growth on the corresponding period in December 2005.”We are extremely pleased with the continued strong growth of the company,” Baker added.
“Our growth is being driven by three key strategies. Firstly, we continue to deliver strong revenue and profit growth in our existing businesses, with the Australian business delivering strong revenue and gross profit growth and the
“Secondly, we continue to enhance our product range with the new release of our commercial sites and the acquisition of additional products for our agent office solutions business. Finally we are advancing our international expansion with the acquisition of casa.it, the leading site in
Acquisitions during the period included four strategic buyouts — Clarke Computers (
REA closed up 17 cents at $6.19.
Australian Property Journal
