- Amid the pandemic and various lockdowns, traffic grew strongly
- Income was down 2%, but earnings (EDITDA) were up 9%
- Share price has grown to new highs, as of close of business today
Online real estate advertising leader REA Group (which runs the number one Australian property site realestate.com.au) has released its half yearly results.
These show a 2% decline in revenue for the first six months of the current financial year (June-December 2020) to $430M, but a 9% lift in earnings as compared the same period a year earlier, to $290M.
Despite lockdowns in Melbourne and various other interferences in the nation’s real estate market, these have been viewed as strong results.
One positive news from the pandemic was a significant uptick in traffic to the site, with realestate.com.au notching up a 56% increase in average daily users to 1.9M, equating to an average 115M visits a month.
“Our flagship site realestate.com.au delivered a stand-out performance for the half,” said REA Group Owen Wilson.
“In November [2020] we set a new record of 13 million people, or 65% of Australia’s adult population on our site.
“Buyer activity also continued to soar with enquiry volumes up 44%, delivering significantly more high-quality leads to our [real estate agency] customers.”
The ASX listed company (ticker ‘REA’) saw its share price rise to new levels, at $157 by close of trading today. This is up 38% from this time a year ago, and 141% up from the depths of the covid-slump in mid-March 2020, when shares bottomed out at $65.
