Hemnet Reports First Quarterly as Public Company

Leading Swedish property portal company Hemnet has today released its first-ever quarterly financial report after debuting on the Stockholm Nasdaq last month. Highlights of the company's Q1 report include:

• Net sales up 26% from SEK 115.3M to SEK 142.5M
• Adjusted EBITDA up 57% to SEK 57.2M
• Operating profit down from SEK 14.1M to SEK 13.6M

Having just gone public, there were a number of one-off expenses in the quarter relating to the IPO which meant that EBITDA grew by only 0.6% year-on-year with the figure for January to March 2021 standing at SEK 33.2M. In terms of non-financial KPIs, the number of listings on the site decreased slightly for the quarter year-on-year to 44,000 compared to 46,800 for 2020, a decrease chalked up by the company to a lack of inventory generally on the market reflecting similar trends in other housing markets around the world.

Speaking about her company's first set of public quarterly results, Hemnet CEO Cilia Beck-Friis said:

"The Hemnet team and I were proud to bring the company to its new home on Nasdaq Stockholm Large Cap on 27 April. The listing of Hemnet is an important milestone and I want to thank all our existing and new shareholders for the confidence they have shown us. I look forward to continuing our growth journey together!"

"We continue to have strong momentum and expect that net sales in the second quarter of 2021 will also show a year-on-year increase that is above the upper end of the Group’s financial target range of 15-20 percent. The increased sales continue to be driven by growth in ARPL, on the back of increased uptake of our value-adding services for sellers, price adjustments, as well as good performance in B2B-revenues."

Apart from IPO related costs, the quarter also saw Hemnet launch a new compensation model for agents under which more emphasis is put on the commission for selling and recommending Hemnet’s value-adding services and less on compensation for administration of the base ad. These 'value adding services' are cited as a key to the company's strategy going forwards. The portal's pricing models also saw changes in Q1 with the pricing model for the basic package (Hemnet Bas) being updated to reflect the flexibility and segmentation of the premium models (Hemnet Plus and Hemnet Premium).

Since its public debut in April, Hemnet's share price has seen a steady rise from its float price of SEK 115 and at the time of writing is trading at SEK 227 on the Stockholm Nasdaq.