Scout24 SE publishes preliminary figures for 2021: Double-digit growth in Group revenue

• Full year guidance for 2021 met: Group revenue up 10.0% year-on-year at EUR 389.0 million
• At a margin of 57.3%, ordinary operating EBITDA was within the guidance range
• Scout24 continues to develop into central point of contact for all real estate transactions, thus diversifying revenue structure
• Strategy opens up new market potential and secures basis for double-digit growth in the future

Munich/Berlin, 1 March 2022

In the 2021 financial year, the Scout24 Group managed to grow revenue by 10.0% year-on-year to EUR 389.0 million (2020: EUR 353.8 million). Thereby the Group has exceeded revenue growth guidance of around 9% as specified in November 2021.

The Group’s ordinary operating EBITDA came to EUR 222.8 million in the 2021 financial year, a year-on-year increase of 5.0% (2020: EUR 212.3 million). At a margin of 57.3%, ordinary operating EBITDA was within the guidance range of 57% to 58%. The 10.0% increase in Group revenue includes the acquisitions of immoverkauf24, Vermietet.de and Propstack. Without these additions, the Scout24 Group would have still achieved a revenue growth of 8.3% and an ordinary operating EBITDA margin of 59.0% in the 2021 financial year.

“We have consistently pursued our strategy with a focus on real estate transaction. Aside from listings for the marketing of real estate, Scout24 increasingly provides products that make real estate transactions more digital and efficient – meaning the entire process around buying and selling, financing, renting for both tenants and landlords as well as managing real estate. In this way, we are diversifying our revenue structure and tapping into new market potential that will sustainably drive our growth in the future,” says Tobias Hartmann, CEO of Scout24 SE.

“We have achieved what we set out to do in 2021. In a tense real estate market, we have increased our revenue by 10 per cent. Our growth products and acquisitions have been our biggest growth drivers. We want to continue to deliver attractive double-digit growth in the coming years. To this end, we will continue to invest in employees, technology, and products. Additionally, we will continue to distribute capital to our shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks. With that we create value for all our stakeholders,” adds Dirk Schmelzer, CFO of Scout24 SE.            
 

Key financial indicators (preliminary, unaudited)

1. Ordinary operating EBITDA is EBITDA adjusted for non-operating effects, mainly expenses for share-based payments, M&A activities (realised and unrealised), reorganisation measures and other non-operating effects.
2. Group (unadjusted) EBITDA is defined as earnings before the financial result, income taxes, depreciation, amortisation and any impairment losses or reversals of impairment losses.
3. Adjusted (1) for non-operating effects, which are also used to determine the ordinary operating EBITDA, (2) for PPA amortisation and impairment of acquired intangible assets, and (3) for financial result effects primarily stemming from the AS24 transaction and from the adjustment of purchase price liabilities. The nominal tax rate is applied to the adjusted earnings.

Strong Q4 with significant acceleration in growth
In the context of the year 2021, the fourth quarter was outstanding. Revenue and earnings growth accelerated further. Q4 Group revenue increased by 11.7% to EUR 101.9 million (2020: EUR 91.2 million). The Residential Real Estate segment was the most notable with revenue growth of 16.6% in the fourth quarter. This impressively underscores the growth potential of Scout24’s transaction-based strategy. The Group’s ordinary operating EBITDA came to EUR 58.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2021, a year-on-year increase of 6.3 %. Thus, Scout24 achieved an ordinary operating EBITDA margin of 57.1% in the fourth quarter.

Residential Real Estate segment benefits from growth products
The Residential Real Estate segment’s revenue increased by 13.8% to EUR 288.4 million in the 2021 financial year (2020: EUR 253.4 million). Mainly contributing to this strong growth were transaction-related revenue from seller leads for agents and revenue from Plus products for consumers. Revenue from seller leads increased by around 87% to EUR 32.2 million (including immoverkauf24 revenue of EUR 10.8 million), while revenue from Plus products (including SCHUFA reports) rose by around 33% to EUR 54.2 million. Average revenue per user (ARPU) with residential real estate partners – Scout24’s traditional core business – increased by 5.8%, while the number of customers rose by 709 (smaller) customers to 17,922.

Ordinary operating EBITDA margin in the Residential Real Estate segment was 59.5% in the 2021 financial year, down 3.7 percentage points year-on-year. This development is on the one hand attributable to higher operating costs and on the other hand reflects the changed revenue mix associated with the growth strategy: revenue from one-off listings is increasingly being replaced by revenue from Plus products and leads, which is growing significantly faster than the core membership business with real estate agents.

Business Real Estate segment still weighed down by Covid-19 pandemic
Revenue in the Business Real Estate segment remained relatively stable in the 2021 financial year, compared with the same period of the previous year. It amounted to EUR 68.9 million for the full year 2021. The continued contraction of the commercial real estate agent business on account of Covid-19 effects was almost completely offset by the growing project developer business. Average revenue per business real estate partner (“ARPU) and the number of business real estate partners changed only slightly.

The Business Real Estate segment’s ordinary operating EBITDA margin increased by 0.8 percentage points year-on-year to 72.0% in 2021.

Dynamic Austrian business a major pillar for the Media & Other segment
The Media & Other segment revenue increased by 1.1% year-on-year to EUR 31.3 million. The ImmoScout24 Austria business grew strongly with revenue up 22.2% and the third-party media business contracted due to market and pandemic-related factors. At the same time, the ordinary operating EBITDA margin in the Media & Other segment decreased by 4.8 percentage points to 33.9% in 2021.

Balance sheet structure characterised by focus on real estate business
Scout24’s consolidated statement of financial position now clearly shows the focus on the ImmoScout24 business. By the end of the 2021 financial year, the proceeds from the sale of AutoScout24 had largely been returned to lenders and shareholders. Primarily as a result of the share buybacks with a volume of over EUR 1 billion that were carried out for this purpose in 2021, total assets decreased from EUR 3.5 billion to EUR 2.4 billion.

Scout24 also plans to return capital to shareholders in the future through share buybacks. Please also refer to the following financial release.

Further growth momentum planned in 2022
Scout24 has budgeted Group revenue growth of between 11 and 12% for the financial year 2022. As this revenue growth is to be generated through additional investments, Scout24 anticipates less growth momentum in Group ordinary operating EBITDA. Here, growth is expected to be between 6 and 8% in 2022.

In the years after 2022, Scout24 anticipates an average annual revenue growth of around 12%. In terms of EBITDA, growth is expected to accelerate significantly from 2023 onwards, driven by the completion of growth investments in 2022 and economies of scale.

Next dates
Scout24 will publish the annual report and sustainability report for the 2021 financial year on Thursday, 24 March 2022. Starting today, weekly stories about the business and the company’s sustainability topics of the past year will be published on http://www.scout24.com/en/reporting-2021 and the company's social media channels.

About Scout24
Scout24 is one of the leading digital companies in Germany. With the digital marketplace ImmoScout24, for residential and commercial real estate, we successfully bring together homeowners, real estate agents, tenants, and buyers - and we have been doing so for more than 20 years. With more than 20 million users per month on the website or in the app, ImmoScout24 is the market leader for digital real estate listing and search. To digitise the process of real estate transactions, ImmoScout24 is continually developing new products and building up an ecosystem for renting, buying, and commercial real estate in Germany and Austria. Scout24 is a listed stock corporation (ISIN: DE000A12DM80, Ticker: G24) and member of the MDAX and the DAX50 ESG. Further information is available on Twitter and LinkedIn. Since 2012, ImmoScout24 has also been active in the Austrian real estate market.

Media Relations
Jan Flaskamp
Vice President Communications & Marketing
Tel.: +4930243010721
E-mail: [email protected]

Investor Relations
Ursula Querette
Head of Investor Relations & Treasury
Tel.: +49 89 262 02 4939     
E-mail: [email protected]

Disclaimer
All information contained in this release has been carefully prepared. However, no liability of any kind is assumed for the information contained herein and/or its completeness. No representation or warranty, express or implied, is given by or on behalf of the Company or any of its directors, officers or employees or any other person as to the accuracy or completeness of the information or opinions contained in this document and no liability whatsoever is accepted by the Company or any of its directors, officers or employees nor any other person for any loss howsoever arising, directly or indirectly, from any use of such information or opinions or otherwise arising in connection therewith.

The information contained in this release is subject to amendment, revision and updating. Certain statements, beliefs and opinions in this document are forward-looking, which reflect the Company’s or, as appropriate, senior management’s current expectations and projections about future events. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that could cause actual results, including but not limited to the Company's financial position or profitability, to differ materially, also adversely, from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Statements contained in this document regarding past trends or activities should not be taken as a representation that such trends or activities will continue in the future. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any information contained in this document (including forward-looking statements), whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release.

Scout24 also uses alternative performance measures, not defined by IFRS, to describe the Scout24 Group’s results of operations. These should not be viewed in isolation but treated as supplementary information. Alternative performance measures used by Scout24 are defined in the corresponding place in the financial reports. The special items used to calculate some alternative performance measures arise from the integration of acquired businesses, reorganisation measures, impairment losses, gains or losses on sale resulting from divestitures and the sale of shareholdings, and other expenses and income that generally do not arise in conjunction with Scout24’s ordinary business activities.

Due to rounding, numbers presented throughout this release may not add up precisely to the totals indicated, and percentages may not precisely reflect the absolute figures for the same reason.

The Q4 and full year 2021 figures contained in this document were neither audited in accordance with §317 HGB nor reviewed by an auditor. The figures mentioned in this document are preliminary and can be subject to changes until the publication of the Annual Report 2021.