Rent.com.au has recorded record group revenue of $890,000 for the March quarter of the 2024 financial year.
In a statement released on the ASX, the website for Australian renters, said group revenue had jumped 41 per cent on the same quarter last year.
Search portal revenue was also up 25 per cent on the same quarter a year ago, while RentPay revenue rose 21 per cent, quarter-on-quarter, or 144 per cent on the same time in 2023.
Rent.com.au Chief Executive Officer Greg Bader said the March quarter had traditionally been a busty one for the platform and this year had been no different.
“We delivered record group revenue with strong year-over-year growth across all revenue lines,” he said.
“Rental property vacancy rates remain at record lows, which impacted demand for our renter products, simply because there were less people moving, but their appeal to renters was underlined by a higher percentage take up of these products compared to last year.”
Mr Bader said property management teams paused mass RentPay migrations during the peak moving period between January and March.
“Whilst our sales pipeline has never been stronger, this deferral of onboarding contributed to lower growth in active RentPay customers, but we expect to make this up across the final quarter of FY24,” he said.
Mr Bader said the search portal rent.com.au had a solid quarter, recording a 25 per cent increase in revenue on the same quarter last year, at $741,000.
This equated to an EBITDA profit of $56,000.
He said renter products and advertising sales drove the result with the penetration of RentCheck up 17 per cent on the same quarter in 2023.
“Similarly, our RentBond loan product has delivered record revenues off increased demand via both our search portal and through referral partners, and despite the fiercely competitive energy market, RentConnect revenue was in line with the same quarter last year,” Mr Bader said.
Mr Bader noted that another significant contributor to the search portal’s improved performance was in advertising sales, which grew 44 per cent compared to the same quarter last year.
“A proportion of this included seasonal or ‘one-off’ campaigns that we will need to replace going forward, but we’ve also added advertisers from new market segments to try and mitigate some of the impact home builders have on this revenue stream,” he said.
The financial results also showed that there were 8928 active customers transacting payments on RentPay as of March 31, which is 99 per cent up on the third quarter of the 2023 financial year.
Almost $250 million in rent has been paid via RentPay since its relaunch and there is a record pipeline of agencies signed up to use the platform that are awaiting onboarding.
“Following rapid growth in the December quarter, active customer growth in Q3 FY24 has been slower despite a significant increase in agencies signing on to RentPay,” Mr Bader said.
“As of the end of the quarter, we had signed agreements from agencies representing more than 4000 tenancies that have yet to be onboarded to RentPay.”
Mr Bader said with the pressure on property managers during the January to March moving period, they had been asked to pause onboarding, and would recommence in the June quarter.
Mr Bader noted that during the March quarter, RentPay’s EBITDA loss was $500,000, which included a $70,000 marketing spend and $252,000 investment in software development, which was a small increase on the previous quarter and reflected new features offered to clients, including new payment methods and cashback/rewards offers.
He said last quarter they cut their credit card rates and launched new card functionality.
“Renters can now use their credit cards to pay rent for less than 1 per cent and the click to pay functionality makes it easier to add a credit card to the user’s RentPay wallet,” Mr Bader said.
“The number of card payments increased 47 per cent, quarter-on-quarter, driving most of the increase in average revenue per user, which grew to $5.53 per user per month.”
In March, they also launched a cashback rewards with PayLab to offset renting costs, with more than 500 customers already activating the offer.
Other initiatives included launching Alipay, WeChat Pay and UnionPay.
Mr Bader said he was pleased with the levels of engagement and effort from the Rent.com.au team and its partners.
He said there had been record revenue for the group and while there was still “sensitivity” in advertising sales revenue, the team was making progress to diversify.
“Given the success we’ve had in signing on new agencies to RentPay, the number of active RentPay customers at the end of March may seem light, but the priority for us has been understanding and accommodating our agent customers’ needs,” Mr Bader said.
“To put our growth in context, the pipeline of tenants yet to onboard is around the same number of customers we’ve added in the past 12 months.
“Coupled with increased awareness in the market, this has been our best quarter ever for RentPay.”
