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Market headwinds continued to batter Realtor.com parent company Move between April and June, with shrinking lead generation and transaction volumes pushing revenues down 24 percent year over year to $146 million.
The company fared slightly better over the 12-month period ending June 30, when it saw revenues slide 15 percent year over year to $602 million.
News Corp CEO Robert Thomson didn’t highlight Move’s performance in his pre-call earnings statement. Instead, he pointed to the larger holding company’s other revenue segments as the key to its success after a series of difficult earnings quarters that saw the company lay off more than 1,000 employees.
News Corp saw revenue decline 9 percent year over year between April and June to $2.43 billion. For the 12-month period ending in June, revenue declined 5 percent to $9.88 billion. The company logged a net loss of $32 million between April and June; however, it still ended the 12-month period with a profit of $187 million. The Total Segment EBITDA also received a boost, landing at $341 million for the three months ending on June 30.
(Unlike most U.S.-based companies, Australia-based News Corp uses a reporting method that ends the year at June 30. The company’s “fiscal year” consequently just concluded, and what most companies call their second quarter is referred to at News Corp as the fourth quarter.)
Robert Thomson | News Corp.
“News Corp’s Fiscal 2023 results highlighted the durability and depth of our revenue streams and the impact of stringent cost controls as we navigated challenging macro conditions, supply chain pressures and currency headwinds,” Thomson said. “We achieved full year Fiscal 2023 revenues of $9.9 billion and profits of over $1.4 billion — the second-highest profitability ever recorded by the Company.”
News Corp’s digital real estate services, which also include Australia-based REA Group, suffered across the board between April and June, and for the fiscal year.
The company’s total revenues for the segment decreased 17 percent year over year to $369 million between April and June, with the segment EBITDA also sliding 11 percent year over year to $108 million. The full-year performance for the segment wasn’t much better, with revenues declining 12 percent to $1.5 billion and EBITDA declining 20 percent to $457 million.
Real estate revenues, which account for roughly three-fourths of Move’s total revenue, also declined. The drop was more pronounced in the quarter, with real estate revenues sliding 29 percent year over year. Meanwhile, real estate revenues for the 12-month period ending June 30 declined 20 percent.
Revenues from ReadyConnect Concierge declined, with its share of total Move revenues dropping from 31 percent between April and June of 2022 to 25 percent during the same period in 2023.
The average monthly unique users of Realtor.com’s web and mobile sites also took a dip in the quarter — declining 20 percent year over year to 74 million.
Although Thomson didn’t highlight Realtor.com in his pre-call release, he used a few moments in the live earnings call Thursday to thank former Realtor.com CEO David Doctorow for his contributions to the company. Doctorow stepped down from his post in June, saying he left the company “with mixed emotions” as he aimed to pursue other opportunities.
“Move experienced much success under David Doctorow and broadened its offerings with the acquisitions of Opcity, UpNest and Avail,” he said. “We sincerely thank David for his positive contribution, which will resonate for years to come.”
Thomson then went on to introduce Realtor.com’s new CEO Damian Eales, who graced the Inman Connect Las Vegas stage for the first time on Tuesday. Eales shared his bold vision for Realtor.com, which has struggled with falling user counts, shrinking revenues as the real estate industry navigates a swift market shift and bruises from CoStar’s failed acquisition of the portal giant.
“One word: Grow,” he told the ICLV crowd of his primary goal. “And I think that if you go one level beneath that, how you grow a business like Realtor.com is you grow audience in the first instance; and then secondly, you do a better job to serve your customers. And that’s what we’re entirely focused on.”
News Corp seems to be hanging its hopes on Eales’s ability to bump Realtor.com back to the No.1 spot, with Thomson saying he believes the brand has what it takes to become News Corp’s top money maker once again and take on its nearest competitor, CoStar.
“Damian Eales brings vast digital experience and fiercely competitive spirit, and much knowledge of how to leverage News Corp’s powerful U.S. platforms, whether that be the New York Post or The Wall Street Journal or Barons to build the brand and expand market share,” he said. “Damien has just returned from Australia, where the Realtor.com team spent time at REA.”
“The creative collaboration between the two companies will certainly intensify,” he added. “Scale is crucial, and to put our scale in perspective, based on June comScore data, Realtor.com’s valuable and engaged audience is well over two times that of [CoStar’s] Homes.com.
“Not only do we have scale in residential sales, we believe that we can continue to monetize that audience successfully.”
Update: This post was updated after publication with information about News Corp’s earnings reporting methodology.
