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Australia’s biggest listings portal has reported massive profit gains while also celebrating its market lead over Domain.
REA Group posted underlying revenue of $261.5 million for the six months to 31 December 2014. That represented 25 per cent growth over the year before.
Australian revenue rose 26 per cent to $236.4 million, giving it a 90 per cent share of the group’s global revenue, which also encompasses Asia, Europe and North America.
REA Group’s underlying profit jumped 34 per cent to $94.7 million. The headline result was actually a $126.4 million profit, but this included $41 million in one-off sales.
Monthly Australian site traffic climbed 12 per cent to 44.6 million. Mobile sites and apps increased their share of this traffic from 43 per cent to 45 per cent.
REA Group also used its results presentation to highlight Nielsen statistics that recorded its market lead over Domain.
“The average monthly visits for realestate.com.au’s combined main and mobile sites outperformed the nearest competitor by 3.3 times,” it said.
“The average monthly time on site for realestate.com.au’s main and mobile sites increased to 230.4 million minutes during the half, extending our lead by 30 per cent to 5.6 times the average monthly time on site of our nearest competitor.”
Chief executive Tracey Fellows said REA Group’s “strong performance” was driven by its “increased focus on agents as well as our new market-based pricing model”, which was controversially introduced last year.
“We are particularly pleased with the growth in our agent numbers and an overall increase in our agent satisfaction ratings,” Ms Fellows said.
“We have extended our lead over our nearest competitor in both number of site visits and time spent on site.
“Significantly, over two thirds of our realestate.com.au audience do not visit our nearest competitor’s site.”
REA Group’s total revenue figure included a 60 per cent increase in Australian listing depth revenue to $159.8 million.
That came after last year’s pricing changes, which focused on pricing depth products based on the location of a property.
“These changes resulted in increased penetration of listing depth products during the half,” the group said.
[Related: REA breaks silence on fee hike]
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