SeLoger.com, a French subsidiary of German publisher Axel Springer AG (ETR:SPR), has acquired French real estate web portal a-Gites.com. The announcement was made last Friday by Axel Springer, without disclosing financial details.

The new attainment will fortify SeLoger’s domestic market position of SeLoger.com. According to Roland Tripard CEO of SeLoger.com, the SeLoger/a-Gites deal is another step in the company’s strategy to expand its leading position on the domestic market and improve its international operations.

A-Gites.com was established in 2003 and it currently offers over 12,000 private holiday houses throughout France.

Hi-Media, the online media group, one of the top Internet publishers in the world, signed an exclusive contract with Se Loger Group Paris.

The European leader in monetising the Internet audience, announced an exclusive advertising network agreement covering the audience for SeLoger.com Group websites: SeLoger.com, Immostreet.com, Bellesdemeures.com, SeLogerVacances.com, Vacances.seloger.com and Agorabiz.com. SeLoger.com is one of the leaders in the ‘Real Estate’ category, ranked as one of the flagship French websites on the Net, attracting over 4 million unique users1 and generating 360 million ad impressions a month.

The site offers precise advertising targeting (geographical location, section, price or type of transaction), thereby leveraging advertising campaign performance. Se Loger also has substantial advertising inventory developed for tablets and smartphones: over 50 million impressions. Advertisers may choose from classic or impactful formats according to their particular requirements.

For David Labrosse, Marketing Manager of SeLoger.com Group: “For Se Loger, joining forces with Hi-media Advertising is part of our strategy of underscoring our brand message for advertisers. In 2012, our main focus will be on developing special campaigns to provide an even better response to advertisers’ digital needs”.

Hi-Media Advertising in Europe: approaching 150 million unique users a month

Advertisers will be offered access to Se Loger Group websites as part of Hi-Media Advertising’s European offering, which includes a number of sector benchmark sites. Hi- Media Advertising operates in 9 European countries* and attracts almost 150 million unique users a month2 in Europe, representing 56% coverage of Internet users.

Sources: 1Nielsen NetRatings, September 2011; ²comScore, deduplicated audience, January 2011.
*France, Belgium, Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Italy.

SOURCE: About Hi-Media Group

Hot on the heals of its equity exchange with Madsack, Axel Springer has partnered with venture capital firm General Atlantic to spin out the online classifieds businesses into a new entity called Axel Springer Digital Classifieds.

The new entity will include jobs portal Stepstone, its 88.7% equity stake in real estate portal Immonet.de and the market leading French real estate portal SeLoger, with all its assets. One of the key assets owned by SeLoger is 16.1 percent of the iProperty Group, the owner and operator of market leading property portals in Asia including Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, the Phillipines, India and two regional portals.

The deal involves Axel Springer selling 30% of the new entity to General Atlantic for euro 237m (US$310m). The businesses put into the new company were valued at euro 790 million and Axel Springer will also inject another euro 460 million to being the combined value of the new company to around euro 1.25 billion.

The valuation of the combined entity at euro 790 million seems low especially since Axel Springer acquired Seloger for euro 637 million in 2011.

Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer AG: “The successful digital classifieds SeLoger, StepStone and Immonet have been a crucial element of Axel Springer’s digitization strategy for years. Consolidating this business within a new, very well capitalized company will create entirely new opportunities for rapid growth and further internationalization. In General Atlantic, we have found an outstanding partner to implement this goal with us.”

“Axel Springer was an early leader in digital media establishing and acquiring several leading businesses across Europe,” said Bill Ford, CEO of General Atlantic. “We are excited to be partnering with the Axel Springer Digital Classifieds team to develop their digital classified business to new heights globally.”

Clearly Axel Springer is looking to expand its business outside of Germany. Its recent investment, via Seloger, into the iProperty Group clearly demonstrates this. The new company is cashed up and with the backing of General Atlantic, will be on the hunt for more acquisitions. One can only assume that property portals in emerging markets will be in their sights.

The deal is subject to approval by the authorities in Germany and France.

Germany’s market leading ImmobilienScout24 (IS24) has taken an equity stake in the Singapore based PropertyGuru.  While the exact terms of the deal are not known, it is being reported that IS24 has invested SG$60 million (AU$/US$47m) for “a significant share”. .  It is not know how much of this has been invested into the company and how much has gone to existing shareholders.  This investment comes hot on the heals of iProperty Group’s raising of AU$10m (SG$12.7m or US$10m).

The PropertyGuru Group is clear market leader in Singapore with subsidiaries in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. PropertyGuru has over 8.2 million visits per month, more than 20,000 real estate agents and around 240 employees.

“The Asian region is a dynamic growth market and therefore of significant strategic importance to Scout24 Group. We are pleased to have found a partner in PropertyGuru with a strong super-regional position. Together, we will be able to develop the Asian market”, says Dr. Martin Enderle, CEO at Scout24 Group.

“This shareholding is part of our internationalization strategy to invest early on in emerging countries with strong growth and to establish the use of the Internet as a central and most effective instrument for seeking and marketing real estate. We built up Germany’s leading real estate marketplace and are pleased to contribute this know-how to our cooperation with PropertyGuru”, emphasizes Marc Stilke, CEO at ImmobilienScout24.

“We see strong economic growth, rising middle classes, urbanisation, developing property markets, as well as an online explosion, taking place throughout Asia. PropertyGuru sits in middle of all of this. Our revenues and traffic doubled over the previous year, and we increased our leadership position in our markets. We welcome ImmobilienScout24 as a strategic investor, which will accelerate our growth and supported additional investment in developing innovative services for our clients,” stated Steve Melhuish, CEO and co-founder of PropertyGuru Group.

This is believed to be ImmoScout24′s first investment outside of Germany/Switzerland and follows on the successful investment last year by Seloger, the market leading French portal, into the iProperty Group. Seloger now holds a 17% stake.

Disclosure: Parties associated with Property Portal Watch have shares in the ASX Listed iProperty Group

SeLoger.com has decided to diversify its offering, in order to do this, the French portal, controlled by the German publisher Axel Springer decided to acquire the seasonal vacation rental property portal Vacances.com. The transaction amount was not specified.

In 2011, SeLoger.com purchased a-Gites.com. “This new acquisition allows SeLoger to cover most of the market” said Roland Tripard, CEO of SeLoger.com, “the rapid growth and diversity of products offered to our customers help make us a major player in this sector,” Tripard concluded.

David Leray, CEO Vacances.com said, “Joining a group such as SeLoger.com, who have 1.3 million listings, allows for development opportunities which we can explore together.”

Axel Springer bought SeLoger.com in March 2011 for more than 620 million Euros. It is the largest investment the company has ever made.

Axel Springer Digital has signed an agreement to acquire allesklar.com AG, which operates the meinestadt.de portal, as part of its strategy to grow online classifieds business.

The local portal, meinestadrt.de, provides extensive information on more than 11,000 German cities and towns; the company is being sold by the founding Stegger family (56.1 percent) and by Holtzbrinck Digital Strategy (43.9 percent).

Founded in 1996, the Siegburg-based allesklar.com employs about 300 people. Its meinestadt.de portal, which lists regional content, job offers, real estate, and general classifieds, claims more than eight million unique users a month.

Allesklar.com’s founder and Chief Executive Manfred Stegger is to leave the company and will be succeeded by Axel Springer’s premium content director Georg Konjovic.

Axel Springer AG is one of the largest multimedia companies in Europe, with more than 11,500 employees and with annual revenues of about €2.9 billion. The company has over 230 newspapers and magazines, more than 80 online offerings as well as holdings in television and radio stations.

In March of this year, Axel Springer AG and the global growth investor General Atlantic agreed to set up Axel Springer Digital Classifieds GmbH. The partnership is currently composed of European online jobs portal StepStone, along with the French and German real estate portals SeLoger and Immonet.

France’s SeLoger, one of the World’s Most Dominant Portals is now accessible via all BlackBerry phones and the Playbook tablet.

Now users can search through SeLoger’s more than 1 million properties, for the ideal property to call home – for sale or for rent – anywhere in France and/or French territories such as La Réunion among others.

SeLoger has indicated that its application is the first and only app intended for French property searching, which is available on BlackBerry smart phones and the Playbook tablet.

The SeLoger BlackBerry application is compatible on all BlackBerry touch screen and / or keyboard (Torch, Bold, Curve, Touch) and the PlayBook tablet.

Users can take notes, set property inspection times in their agenda and save their searches under ‘favourites’ so to easily access them again a later time, for further examination or to book an appointment with an agent.

The app also uses geolocation to find real estate agents’ offices near by, for easier contact regarding a property of interest.

Once the user has decided on a property they can share it with their friends and family on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

SeLoger’s BlackBerry app is available for free download here.

SeLoger already has iPhone, Android and Kindle Fire apps.

Yesterday we looked at why the Australian online real estate market structure changed dramatically from September 2000, when domain.com.au last had more unique visitors than realestate.com.au, to today where realestate.com.au (the REA Group) dominates the market place and is valued at over US$3.4 billion.

This second part of the article looks at what Fairfax can do to really take on the REA Group.

Float of The Domain Group

The first and most important thing that Fairfax should do is float domain.com.au and its sister companies – APM and Commerce Australia.  APM is one of the leading real estate data companies in Australia while Commerce Australia is one of the leading CRM systems for the real estate industry.

There is a clear precedent for putting these types of business together in a listed vehicle. OnTheHouse recently floated on the Australian market and, while much smaller than domain.com.au, has a market value US$55 million. There are also overseas examples of these types of companies being put together including Seloger in France who also owns Pericles, a software company.

There are clear benefits from being a listed vehicle:

• Value would immediately be released.  Domain.com.au probably has revenues in the $60 – 70m range and is believed to be profitable.  Add to this the revenues from Commerce Australia and APM and it should be quite an attractive business to list.  You could speculate as to how much the business would be worth however if the REA Group is worth $3.4 billion, and the much smaller (revenue wise) iProperty Group is worth $170m, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine domain.com.au and its sister businesses being worth north of $300m.
• Any funds raised during a float could be used to fund consolidation of the market as well as targeted marketing messages.
• Equity in the business could be used to attract and retain quality talent – always something that is important in the highly talent competitive Australian market.
• Ability to operate as an entrepreneurial business.  This is important if you really want to take on the corporatized REA Group.

Aggressively Consolidate the Market

Zoopla is a great example of a business that has used acquisitions (and thus consolidation of the market) to create a viable #2 in the UK market.

There are a number of opportunities in the Australian market for domain.com.au t0 consolidate smaller players and therefore creates a more competitive number 2 to the market leading realestate.com.au.

The clear consolidation options would be:

• realestateview in Victoria – this would bring together the number two and number three player in the Victorian market to actually provide the number one player with strong competition
• reiwa.com.au in Western Australia – this is a market in which domain.com.au is weak and through consolidation could provide stronger competition and an alternative advertising source to the market leading realestate.com.au
• OnTheHouse – this listed vehicle closely mimics the domain group companies in which domain.com.au and onthehouse.com.au could be merged, APM and Residex could be merged, and PortPlus and Commerce Australia merged. This combined group could be very powerful profitable and significantly well valued.

Signed Up Agents as Shareholders

One area that should be explored is signing up agents as shareholders or issuing equity to agents. Historically it can be seen that when agents have access to equity they can tend to favour advertising on that vehicle. In the UK, Rightmove started life as an agent owned but independently operated website.

Given the inherent agent dislike within the Australian market towards the REA group and its perceived high level of charges, there may be an opportunity to leverage this undercurrent to divert some of the discretionary advertising spend towards an independent domain.com.au site.

This will also play on the fact that the Ray White group captured significant equity upside by investing in realestate.com.au (the REA Group) at $0.23 and selling out at around $6. Many agents feel they missed out on this opportunity and could potentially want equity in a new listed vehicle.

Build a Marketing Leading Team

Domain has to do is to build a high quality focused team. While it could be argued that today there are many strong and capable employees within domain.com.au and its sister companies, the reality is that this team has over the years been unable to close the gap with realestate.com.au.  Being part of a traditional corporate such as Fairfax, it is hard to attract top talent and provide them with an entrepreneurial and exciting environment. The other challenge is that within the traditional corporate’s, quality people often get reassigned to the traditional businesses in an attempt to prolong those revenue streams.

By leveraging equity and a more entrepreneurial stand-alone environment, domain.com.au should be up to attract higher quality experienced online real estate personnel including many existing and former REA group employees.

Tap into the Market Discontent

When you talk to agents and franchise group operators in the Australian market, there is a clear level of discontent with the amounts being charged for both subscriptions and premium products by the REA group.

This discontent should provide domain with an opportunity to position itself as the friends of the agent and to help it capture a greater share of the Australian market. Of course, being a separate listed vehicle with the ability of agents and developers to freely take an equity stake, would make it easier for them to position themselves as the friends of the industry. This is the position that the REA group once held.

Summary

The listing of domain.com.au and its sister companies is likely to create a new paradigm in which there is a chance that they can improve their overall position in the market and provide much greater competition to the REA Group juggernaut.

I guess the real question is not whether Fairfax can truly take on the REA Group, it is do they have the strategy and the courage to execute that strategy in a way that they haven’t shown to date.

While there are no certainties in life, except for death and taxes, it is safe to say that if Fairfax continues down the same path that it has for the last 12 1/2 years, it is likely to continue to achieve the same outcome.

Simon Baker is the former CEO and MD of the REA Group.  In 2000 he did the deal for News Corp to take at 42% stake in the REA Group.  Between 2001 and 2008 he was responsible for turning the business around growing revenues from $4m to $155m, turning a $6m loss to a $35m profit, and growing market cap from $8m to a high of just under $1bn.

Today Simon invests in and provides strategic and operational advice and guidance to a range of property portals around the world. He can be contacted at sbaker@cavih.com.

The iProperty group is the leading player in the South East Asian property portal market. The group owns and operates leading sites in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Macau and Hong Kong and has a market cap of over US$170 million.

However, this has not always been the case. In early 2009, the company had a market cap of just US$6m, its revenues and business growth had stalled, and there was no clear strategy in place.

In mid to late 2009, I had the opportunity to invest in the iProperty Group, join the Board and become the Chairman, and to provide strategic advice and guidance to help turn around the business.

In part one of the article, I looked at what were the main drivers of the rapid decline of the iProperty share price and thus market cap. These included acquisitions being easier than operations, the focus on centralization rather than local operations, the quality of the leadership team, and the management of market expectations.

In part two of the article, I look at the specific actions that were undertaken to transform the business and release value by propelling the share price from 6 cents to its current trading level of around US$1.00.

In particular these involved getting clarity in the overall strategy, putting a new management team in place, reinvigorating the Board, attracting a strategic external investor and ensuring that the acquisitions were focus on improving the overall market leadership position.

Clarity in Strategy

The first step in turning the business around was to work with the Board and Senior Management on the business strategy.

iProperty had portals in multiple countries, print publications, a software product, and an exhibition business.  For any business, let alone a start-up, this was way too much to handle.  The objective was to work out where real long-term value will come from and therefore where management efforts should be focused.

The outcome of this was that Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia were clearly the markets on which iProperty should focus while the Philippines, India, and Taiwan were deemed a distraction to the business.

Therefore the investment in Taiwan was exited (i.e. written off), the Indian shareholding was left dormant at 25% with no further investment, and the Philippines website was put into hibernation (i.e. no one working on it).

Within the three remaining markets, the focus was on the online businesses rather than print, software, or exhibitions. The last three were seen as methods to improve overall awareness and efficiency of the online advertising business.

This clarity in strategy meant the business was able to better allocate resources to drive stronger results in each market. The results can be clearly seen in the strongly improved performance of the Malaysian online business.

A New Management Team

The next area reviewed was the ability to execute the strategy. In any business this comes down to management. It was clear that a more experienced management team was required and that core roles, such as the CFO, needed to be in sourced.

The first step was to appoint a new CEO. Shaun Di Gregorio was someone that I had worked closely with at the REA Group. For nearly 8 years we had worked together in growing that business and I believed that Shaun was the ideal candidate to run the iProperty Group. He joined the company in early 2010. His impact was immediate as he brought a new level of professionalism to the business.

A new CFO was appointed who understood both the online world and the ASX. Rod Brandenburg came from web jet and helped add significant value to the business.

A new CIO was also sourced from the REA Group. Clearly Andy Kelk had a strong knowledge of online real estate and was ready for the next step to being CIO of the iProperty Group.

Finally, several new country managers were appointed to run the operations in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia.

This new Senior Management team brought a higher level of focus, understanding, and passion to the business that helped release significant value through strong operations focus.

The result was that revenues grew rapidly from US$4m in 2009 to US$15.5m in 2012.

Reinvigoration of the Board

The Board in 2009 was a little short on relevant industry knowledge. As we saw in Part 1, it was probably a case of the Board learning as fast as the business in what was required to run one of these businesses rather than leading the business in the right direction.

It was important to bring additional industry skills and knowledge to the iProperty Group Board. Two new Board members were appointed.

Georg Chmiel was someone that I had worked with and was appointed to the Board. Georg brought in-depth industry knowledge and experience having been the CFO of the REA Group for 6 years and had recently been appointed the CEO of the LJ Hooker Real Estate Group. Georg’s key skills lay in the ability to understand the numbers and thus lead the audit committee as well as being able to bridge the gap between finance, strategy and operations. He is definitely a key member of the Board.

With the placement to Seloger in France, Roland Tripard (the CEO of Seloger) joined as a Director bringing in-depth industry knowledge and experience to the iProperty Group Board. He also added practical and relevant experience to the Board.

External Investment

To help drive growth, it was clear that additional funds would be required. While mechanism such as rights issues could be used to raise additional capital, there was an opportunity to do a placement with a strong industry partner. A process was conducted in 2011 in which a number of major industry players were asked if they would like to invest in the business. Two actually conducted due diligence and made a bid with Seloger being the successful applicant. They invested $8.9m for a 9.4% stake in the company.

The result is that the iProperty Group was cashed up, had access to additional skills and resources, and had clearly announced its presence on the world stage.

Focused Acquisition

The final area to work on with the iProperty Group was how they approached acquisitions.  The focused changed from rapid, almost ad hoc acquisitions, to more strategic acquisitions that clearly helped reinforce the presence in the key markets.

In particular the iProperty Group:

• In 2010
  • Acquired SG-House in Singapore;
  • Acquired thinkproperty.com.my, the number 2 property portal in Malaysia;
• In 2011
  • Acquired Rumah123 in Indonesia – the market leading site
• In 2012
  • Acquired vproperty.com in Macau – the market leading site
• In 2013
  • Acquire Smart Expo – the second largest expo business in S.E. Asia

The clear objective of these acquisitions was to either reinforce the market leading position in Singapore or Malaysia or to acquire a leadership position in Indonesia and Macau.

—–

The turn around of the iProperty Group can be clearly linked to the clear changes made at the end of 2009 and early 2010.  Underlying the successful turnaround was the clarity in strategy, the appointment of strong Senior Management, the upgrading of the Board, the additional funding secured for the business and placement of a shareholding to a strategic investor.

The changes have set the right tone in the market and there is now strong expectations built into the share price.  The challenge for the Board and Management is to deliver against these expectations.

Simon Baker is the former Chairman of the iProperty Group. In 2009 he invested into the iProperty Group, become Chairman and lead the corporate structuring of the business.  During his time as Chairman, the company’s share price increased from 10c to $1, the business increased revenues from $4m to $15m, the company attracted quality Senior Management, and iProperty completed multiple capital raising to ensure it was fully cashed up. 

Simon is also the former CEO and MD of the REA Group.  In 2000 he did the deal for News Corp to take at 42% stake in the REA Group.  Between 2001 and 2008 he was responsible for turning the business around growing revenues from $4m to $155m, turning a $6m loss to a $35m profit, and growing market cap from $8m to a high of just under $1bn.

Today Simon invests in and provides strategic and operational advice and guidance to a range of property portals around the world. He can be contacted at sbaker@cavih.com.

Pakistan’s Zameen.com has signed up with several international portals dedicated to classified and property listings, including global players such as OLX, Trovit & Mitula.com.

The strategic move now connects Pakistan’s property market and its listings with the world’s top classified search engines, putting Pakistan on the radar of genuine buyers and sellers from around the world.

With over a quarter million listings to date, more than 260,000 registered users, and over 20 million page views in 2012, the effort made by the team at Zameen.com to verify & provide authentic and secured listings has lead to the generation of over 500,000 genuine leads for Pakistan’s real estate market in less than 3 years across the Buy, Sell, Rent & Invest categories.

Zameen.com has won International Property Awards (in association with) CNBC – Best Property Portal of Pakistan Award 2007, Asia Pacific Property Awards (in association with) CNBC – Best Property Portal of Pakistan 2008, International Property Awards (in association with) CNBC – Best Property Portal of Asia 2008 and International Property Awards (in association with) CNBC – Best International Portal 2008.

CEO of Zameen.com, Zeeshan Ali Khan welcomes the partnerships and sharing of listings with global players. “The move is a reinforcement of our belief in the real estate segment of Pakistan, and our goal is to create a module of transparency and offer one click convenience in finding the right property for our users and visitors, in Pakistan and around the world.”  COO, Imran Ali Khan, added, “Our long term effort to verify listings have paid off, & we have acquired the largest network of genuine property owners, & agents in Pakistan. We can now offer unparalleled & legitimate listings to our new online partners which amplify the number of access points to our free property information online.”

The string of recent and rapid partnerships is in no small measure attributed to Zameen.com’s new partner and Chairman, Gilles Blanchard. Originating from France, he is the co-founder of SeLoger, Europe’s Pioneer Real Estate Listing which was launched in 1992 on the French MiniTel, a videotex online service accessible through telephone lines, and considered one of the world’s most successful pre-World Wide Web online services.

In 2010 SeLoger was in European news headlines when a $635.7 million offer by Axel Springer AG, a Euros 2.9 billion valued company and one of the largest multimedia companies in Europe, caused SeLoger shares to rise as much as 32%. However SeLoger shareholders rejected the deal and within 3 days Axel increased its offer 15.6% to $735 million.

Today SeLoger is a wholly owned subsidiary of Axel Springer AG and Classified Ad Ventures, and is the second largest shareholder in the Asian Online Real Estate Giant, iProperty Group operating in the markets of Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Singapore with investments in India and Philippines.

With groundbreaking experience in the international property and real estate market, in Europe, Brazil in South America and across Asia, Blanchard banks on Pakistan’s Real Estate to grow exponentially as increased urban and sub urban development and infrastructure create demand for new residential and commercial properties, amidst rapid change brought about by global investments and projects. He adds, “Zameen.com has given me the opportunity to explore the billion dollar industry of Pakistan Real Estate. As somebody who keeps a close eye on global real estate, I can see that property prices here in Pakistan have strengthen  and the best part is that they are still going strong. With our expertise and international partners, things are only going to get better and more transparent in the business of real estate & property information sharing in Pakistan, and connecting to a significant population of Pakistani’s working or residing overseas. The greater satisfaction comes from being able to help connect people to their dream homes, and projects through Zameen.com.”

Three weeks ago, Axel Springer announced its intention to make a take over bid for Seloger, France’s market leading property portal.  On the 29th September, Reuters reported that the Board of SeLoger.com has rejected the 566 million euro (US$755 million) takeover offer from German media group Axel Springer, saying it was hostile and did not point to any synergies.

SeLoger said on Wednesday the offer of 34 euros per share, officially filed on Tuesday, undervalued the company. “The board … reaffirms its willingness to prevent any attempt of a creeping takeover of the company.”

Axel Springer, which owns the tabloid Bild and the daily Die Welt, on Tuesday filed an offer for the 87.6 percent of SeLoger it did not already own. It paid 34 euros per share for a 12.4 percent stake in SeLoger bought in an off-market transaction unveiled on Sept. 16.

At the time, Groupe Arnault, the investment company of LVMH chief executive Bernard Arnault which owns 9 percent of SeLoger, rejected the offer as too low.

Since Springer announced its intention to make a bid, shares in SeLoger have remained above 34 euros, indicating investors have been betting on a higher counter-offer.

SeLoger closed at 37.55 euros on Friday 1st October.

There is only a week to go until the Property Portal Watch conference in Barcelona.

The 3 day conference is from the 20th November to the 22nd. For more information go to the events section on the Property Portal Watch website.

It is not too late to register for this event.  Registration is only euro 499 for the 3 days.  Click here to register for the event.

We already have 200+ people attending the conference and we hope to hit 250 on the day.

There are representatives from 37 different countries, 70+ different portals being represented, investors and industry suppliers. You won’t want to miss this event.

These portals include:

Seloger – the leader in France
Immobilienscout24, Immonet, and Immowelt – the top 3 in Germany
Immoweb – the leader in Belgium
VivaReal and Imovelweb – the leaders in Brazil
Boliga – the leader in Denmark
Plusvalía – the leader in Ecuador
Daft – the leader in Ireland
Immobiliare and Casa – the leaders in Italy
Funda – the leader in Netherlands
Inmuebles24 – one of the leaders in Mexico
Zameen – the leader in Pakistan
Idealista and Fotocasa – the leaders in Spain
Hemnet – the leader in Sweden
Plus many more …

We also have horizontal search engines including:

Zap Imóveis – Brazil
Avito – Russia
Finn – Norway
Vivastreet
Hebbes – Belgium

We have a great line up of 20+ speakers including:

• Roland Tripard – CEO of Seloger (France)
• Andreas Assum – Immobilienscout24 (Germany)
• Justin Clarke – CEO of Private Property (South Africa)
• Daniele Mancini – CEO of Casa (Italy)
• Christophe Rousseaux – CEO of Imovelweb (Belgium)
• Simon Baker – Chairman of Property Portal Watch
• Jonas Åradsson – Co-Founder & Partner at Boliga (Denmark)
• Gilles Blanchard – Chairman Zameen (Pakistan)
• Tim Bjelkstam – Head of Business Development at Hemnet (Sweden)
• Brian Requarth – VivaReal (Brazil)

I would love to see you at the conference in Barcelona. For more information – please click here.

Christophe Rousseaux, CEO of Immoweb

Today at the Property Portal Watch Conference in Barcelona, Christophe Rousseaux the CEO of Immoweb in Belgium discussed his business and how they work with Axel Springer Digital Classifieds as a strategic investment partner.

Immoweb is the clear market leader in Belgium.  They have 155,000 ads, 300,000 daily visits and a team of 60 people.  Over the life of the business they have published 4.5 million ads.  There continues to be strong growth in traffic driven, in particular, by mobile technologies.

The is no clear #2 in the market and versus the competition, Immoweb is 5 times bigger than the next biggest competitor.

When looking at what has driven their success the put it down to:

• Team
• Passion
• Surfer focus
• Strategic partnerships
• Largest customer database
• Efficient and easy to use platform

A year ago Axel Springer Digital Classified purchased 80% of the Immoweb business.  Axel Springer Digital Classified is a joint venture (70:30) between Axel Springer in Germany and General Atlantic.

The key reasons behind the investment are to drive stronger growth, capture some synergies with sister companies (Seloger, Immonet), and share best practice with all the other investment companies at Axel Springer Digital Classifieds.

When looking at a year later, there has been strong value delivered from taking on board a strategic investor.  They have grown faster than plan, captured some synergies, increased motivation within the team, new opportunities have been created, and the overall business is becoming more and more professional.

If you would like to attend the next Property Portal Conference, join us in New York on January 13 – 14 2014.

Here is a list of the top 10 most valuable property portal companies in the world.

The combined value of this list is over USD 30 billion.

Heading up the list is the New York Stock Exchange listed Soufun which operates in China.  This company has seen tremendous valuation growth in the last 2 years.  Second place is taken up by the REA Group that has also seen significant valuation growth while Rightmove in the UK brings up third place.

This list is not exhaustive and doesn’t take into accounts sites such as Suumo in Japan that is part of the Recruit Group.  We will try to add that to the list in the future.

If we are missing any other sites, please let us know.

Valuation notes:

NYSE = New York Stock Exchange

ASX = Australian Stock Exchange

LSE = London Stock Exchange

The value of ImmobilienScout24 is based on 70% of the value of the Scout24 Group and this is valued at EUR 2 billion based on the most recent transaction  with Hellman and Friedman.

The valuation of Zoopla is based on market speculation following noises that Zoopla is looking to float in the UK at around GBP 1 billion.

The valuation of Seloger in France is an estimate and based on the sale price of EUR 633 in 2011 and same growth rate of Rightmove over the same time.  This growth rate was halved to take into account the highly competitive nature of the market especially from Le Bon Coin.

The valuation of Domain is based on market speculation and the relative size of Domain versus realestate.com.au (part of the REA Group) and then discounted for being in second place in the market.

Attend the Property Portal Watch Conference in Singapore on the 7th – 9th May and find out more about how property portals around the world are valued.

Simon Baker is the former CEO and Managing Director of the REA Group.

Last week we released our list of the top 10 most valuable property portal companies in the world.  Thanks to our readers and a little more research, we have been able to increase this list to the top 20 and we have added AirBNB to the top of the list following reports that the privately held company is in the process of raising money at a valuation of USD 10 billion.

The two new entries to the top 10 are Auction.com and AirBNB with Trulia and Domain in Australia dropping out.

The combined value of the top 20 is over USD 45 billion.

Attend the Property Portal Watch Conference in Singapore on the 7th – 9th May and find out more about how property portals around the world are valued.

This week, Australia’s REA Group, Australia’s leading digital advertising business specializing in property, officially announced it had acquired a 17.22% shareholding in iProperty Group, owner of Asia’s No.1 network of property portal sites under the iProperty brand.

The shares, valued at A$106.3, were acquired from SeLoger.com SA, operator of France’s largest property classifieds portal and a subsidiary of the digital publisher Axel Springer SE.

SeLoger, which invested in iProperty back in 2011, said that it decided to sell its interest in the Group because it was difficult to gain a strategic majority, besides SeLoger currently wishes to focus more on the European market.

Today, iProperty Group announced that it was pleased to welcome the REA Group as one of its major shareholders.

iProperty Group’s Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Georg Chmiel said, “This substantial investment by the REA Group is a strong validation of our unique and leading market presence in Asia. The REA’s strong business acumen will be a major asset in advancing the iProperty Group’s development, both in maintaining its current strengths and reaching new heights in Asia.

REA’s interim Chief Executive Officer, Peter Tonagh, was quoted saying that the acquisition provides the REA Group with a strategic stake in one of the fastest growing real estate markets in the world and complements its existing business in Hong Kong, and the recent launch of MyFun.com and our partnership with Soufun.com in China.

Since its launch, the iProperty Group, has seen consistent growth in traffic and revenue. The company, which is the trusted and preferred marketing partner to 30,000 property agents and 400 developers, also serves 4 million consumers per month.

In the second quarter as well as first half of the year, the iProperty Group has demonstrated strong organic growth. Cash receipts for the second quarter were AUD$6.0 million resulting in a net operating cash inflow of AUD$0.2m. Cash receipts for the first half of 2014 were AUD$11.3m, up 26% on the same period last year.

“We have worked hard to achieve a clear leadership position and to make iProperty Group the trusted platform for both consumers and customers in Asia. Now, with our combined strength together, we will be able to accelerate our growth in Asia to reach even greater heights.” concluded Chmiel.

Seloger is fighting back against the onslaught of LeBonCoin. They have launched a new site, acquired Webimm.com (a commercial site), launched a new offer for agents, investing in big data, and they have launched a new TV advertising campaign.

The following is a translated (thanks to Google) interview in Immomartin with Bertrand Gstalder, the General Manager of Media at Seloger.com.

What is your communication plan this year?

In 2014, our marketing investments increased by 40%. This allowed us to return to television with a campaign of three weeks in March, followed by a second wave in the fall, coupled with a web campaign. We wanted to highlight the effectiveness of our portal as a real estate specialist. The aim was also to maintain the reputation of the site. 80% of the advertising purchase budget was invested on TF1.

What biases guided redesigning your site?

SeLoger.com been constant changes but we accelerated the consolidation of the main pages for a year. First presentation page ads and results list. We worked on ergonomics and ease of use of the site, which has also allowed us to see an increase of 25% contacted a result of these changes. We just put online a new homepage in September. We want to be clear in our promise. Previously, the Internet came on an efficient real estate search engine. This is the heart of our business. Today, the site supports the user in all stages: it can inform and prepare project upstream of ads and professionals to accompany him, and finally complete the project, through simulation credit for example.

What’s new?

We have formed a Big Data team that allows us both to provide a more qualified agencies to provide information and much more personalized to the user experience. For example, the picture of the homepage banner will change depending on the geographical area of ​​research. In the “Surround”, the site recommends a selection of surrounding real estate agencies. We also created a new platform dedicated to news content and advice. Our mobile app has also been completely revised and a dedicated mobile site was developed.

Can you tell us about your new offer BtoB?

Beyond the performance of our traffic, we want to nurture and accelerate the business of our customers. The offer “the listing’s Pass” was officially launched on 22 September. It is available in three levels: Bronze, Silver and Gold. The Bronze Pass includes the first level of access to the service with most of SeLoger. Additional services are available in Silver and Gold Pass. The driving idea of this job is to support our customers throughout their value chain. We are already known and recognized for contacts of buyers and tenants. We now better assist officers in winning new mandates for example. So cross, this offer also allows you to work on the reputation of the agency, which is now mostly digital showcase.

What new services do you offer?

We developed SeLogerPlus, replacing SelogerPro. The real estate agent can accesses a very easy to use control platform, as well as the agency head by his team, as multi-media and multi-login. From the Silver Pass, our customers can receive in addition to their contacts for more information. In other words, indicators that allow the agency to better qualify her touch, to optimize the discovery of his project and to prioritize treatment. We also developed new ad formats “silver” and “gold” that provide better graphic distinction of supply and give it a display priority. This allows in particular to work better exclusives.

Prices have changed?

We have completely redesigned our commercial offer, which is not comparable in terms of services. The previous offer was on the map, with the spread and a multitude of options. It was found that this formula was too complex. A well packaged offer is much easier to understand. Depending on the maturity of the agency, its mandates, the portfolio structure, agents can easily position themselves. If we compare the 2015 Bronze Pass the Essential 2012, it is indeed a price difference related to the addition of new services with high added value.

Source: Immomartin

SeLoger.com, the largest online real estate portal in France, has acquired PRAXIS SARL, the operator of Amivac.com, the French portal for holiday rentals. In 2011 and 2012, SeLoger has acquired the portals a-Gîtes.com and Vacances.com within this segment. Alongside Seloger, Axel Springer is also active in the holiday accommodation business in several countries through @leisure.

Amivac.com was founded in 2002 and offers around 30,000 holiday properties, most of them in France. The majority of these properties are advertised by private owners. The activities of the company and Amivac brand will be integrated into SeLoger's existing vacation rental portfolio.

Roland Tripard: "We want to provide our customers with a range of holiday properties as comprehensive as possible. Amivac.com is a perfect fit for our strategy of strengthening our position, above all in France. With this acquisition, SeLoger is significantly increasing its offer and its audience in this segment and will shortly be in a position to offer its users the ability to book their stay online."

Axel Springer has acquired the remaining 15 percent ownership interest in Axel Springer Digital Classifieds GmbH from General Atlantic, a leading global growth equity firm.

Through this transaction, Axel Springer is now the 100 percent holder of the Axel Springer Digital Classifieds, which includes StepStone, SeLoger, Immowelt/Immonet and yad2. As part of the transaction, General Atlantic will receive 8,955,311 new shares in Axel Springer SE. Thus, General Atlantic holds 8.3 percent in Axel Springer. The new shares are created on the basis of the authorized capital as agreed at the Annual General Meeting 2015.

Axel Springer and General Atlantic entered into a strategic partnership in 2012 to create Axel Springer Digital Classifieds. The new joint venture was comprised of the leading French real estate portal SeLoger, the German real estate portal Immonet, and the European job exchange StepStone. The consolidation of its existing assets into an independent company combined with the expertise of General Atlantic enhanced Axel Springer's ability to expand its business in the attractive segment of digital classifieds in a targeted manner, as part of its digitization and internationalization strategy.

The goal of the partnership was to create opportunities for rapid growth and further internationalization through bundling offers in a company with strong capital resources. Axel Springer Digital Classifieds has expanded its job portals (such as Totaljobs, Saongroup, YourCareerGroup, Jobsite and Drushim), real estate portals (such as Immowelt and Immoweb), the regional portal meinestadt.de, the car classifieds portal LaCentrale, and the leading Israeli classifieds portal Yad2. Almost all the classified ad portals in the Axel Springer Digital Classifieds portfolio are market leaders in their respective segments.

The iProperty group is the leading player in the South East Asian property portal market. The group owns and operates leading sites in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Macau and Hong Kong and has a market cap of over US$170 million.

However, this has not always been the case. In early 2009, the company had a market cap of just US$6m, its revenues and business growth had stalled, and there was no clear strategy in place.

In mid to late 2009, I had the opportunity to invest in the iProperty Group, join the Board and become the Chairman, and to provide strategic advice and guidance to help turn around the business.

In part one of the article, I looked at what were the main drivers of the rapid decline of the iProperty share price and thus market cap. These included acquisitions being easier than operations, the focus on centralization rather than local operations, the quality of the leadership team, and the management of market expectations.

In part two of the article, I look at the specific actions that were undertaken to transform the business and release value by propelling the share price from 6 cents to its current trading level of around US$1.00.

IPP Share Price from 2009 to 2013

In particular these involved getting clarity in the overall strategy, putting a new management team in place, reinvigorating the Board, attracting a strategic external investor and ensuring that the acquisitions were focus on improving the overall market leadership position.

Clarity in Strategy

The first step in turning the business around was to work with the Board and Senior Management on the business strategy.

iProperty had portals in multiple countries, print publications, a software product, and an exhibition business.  For any business, let alone a start-up, this was way too much to handle.  The objective was to work out where real long-term value will come from and therefore where management efforts should be focused.

The outcome of this was that Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia were clearly the markets on which iProperty should focus while the Philippines, India, and Taiwan were deemed a distraction to the business.

Therefore the investment in Taiwan was exited (i.e. written off), the Indian shareholding was left dormant at 25% with no further investment, and the Philippines website was put into hibernation (i.e. no one working on it).

Within the three remaining markets, the focus was on the online businesses rather than print, software, or exhibitions. The last three were seen as methods to improve overall awareness and efficiency of the online advertising business.

This clarity in strategy meant the business was able to better allocate resources to drive stronger results in each market. The results can be clearly seen in the strongly improved performance of the Malaysian online business.

A New Management Team

The next area reviewed was the ability to execute the strategy. In any business this comes down to management. It was clear that a more experienced management team was required and that core roles, such as the CFO, needed to be in sourced.

The first step was to appoint a new CEO. Shaun Di Gregorio was someone that I had worked closely with at the REA Group. For nearly 8 years we had worked together in growing that business and I believed that Shaun was the ideal candidate to run the iProperty Group. He joined the company in early 2010. His impact was immediate as he brought a new level of professionalism to the business.

A new CFO was appointed who understood both the online world and the ASX. Rod Brandenburg came from web jet and helped add significant value to the business.

A new CIO was also sourced from the REA Group. Clearly Andy Kelk had a strong knowledge of online real estate and was ready for the next step to being CIO of the iProperty Group.

Finally, several new country managers were appointed to run the operations in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia.

This new Senior Management team brought a higher level of focus, understanding, and passion to the business that helped release significant value through strong operations focus.

The result was that revenues grew rapidly from US$4m in 2009 to US$15.5m in 2012.

Reinvigoration of the Board

The Board in 2009 was a little short on relevant industry knowledge. As we saw in Part 1, it was probably a case of the Board learning as fast as the business in what was required to run one of these businesses rather than leading the business in the right direction.

It was important to bring additional industry skills and knowledge to the iProperty Group Board. Two new Board members were appointed.

Georg Chmiel was someone that I had worked with and was appointed to the Board. Georg brought in-depth industry knowledge and experience having been the CFO of the REA Group for 6 years and had recently been appointed the CEO of the LJ Hooker Real Estate Group. Georg's key skills lay in the ability to understand the numbers and thus lead the audit committee as well as being able to bridge the gap between finance, strategy and operations. He is definitely a key member of the Board.

With the placement to Seloger in France, Roland Tripard (the CEO of Seloger) joined as a Director bringing in-depth industry knowledge and experience to the iProperty Group Board. He also added practical and relevant experience to the Board.

External Investment

To help drive growth, it was clear that additional funds would be required. While mechanism such as rights issues could be used to raise additional capital, there was an opportunity to do a placement with a strong industry partner. A process was conducted in 2011 in which a number of major industry players were asked if they would like to invest in the business. Two actually conducted due diligence and made a bid with Seloger being the successful applicant. They invested $8.9m for a 9.4% stake in the company.

The result is that the iProperty Group was cashed up, had access to additional skills and resources, and had clearly announced its presence on the world stage.

Focused Acquisition

The final area to work on with the iProperty Group was how they approached acquisitions.  The focused changed from rapid, almost ad hoc acquisitions, to more strategic acquisitions that clearly helped reinforce the presence in the key markets.

In particular the iProperty Group:

• In 2010
  • Acquired SG-House in Singapore;
  • Acquired thinkproperty.com.my, the number 2 property portal in Malaysia;
• In 2011
  • Acquired Rumah123 in Indonesia – the market leading site
• In 2012
  • Acquired vproperty.com in Macau – the market leading site
• In 2013
  • Acquire Smart Expo – the second largest expo business in S.E. Asia

The clear objective of these acquisitions was to either reinforce the market leading position in Singapore or Malaysia or to acquire a leadership position in Indonesia and Macau.

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The turn around of the iProperty Group can be clearly linked to the clear changes made at the end of 2009 and early 2010.  Underlying the successful turnaround was the clarity in strategy, the appointment of strong Senior Management, the upgrading of the Board, the additional funding secured for the business and placement of a shareholding to a strategic investor.

The changes have set the right tone in the market and there is now strong expectations built into the share price.  The challenge for the Board and Management is to deliver against these expectations.

Simon Baker is the former Chairman of the iProperty Group. In 2009 he invested into the iProperty Group, become Chairman and lead the corporate structuring of the business.  During his time as Chairman, the company's share price increased from 10c to $1, the business increased revenues from $4m to $15m, the company attracted quality Senior Management, and iProperty completed multiple capital raising to ensure it was fully cashed up. 

Simon is also the former CEO and MD of the REA Group.  In 2000 he did the deal for News Corp to take at 42% stake in the REA Group.  Between 2001 and 2008 he was responsible for turning the business around growing revenues from $4m to $155m, turning a $6m loss to a $35m profit, and growing market cap from $8m to a high of just under $1bn.

Today Simon invests in and provides strategic and operational advice and guidance to a range of property portals around the world. He can be contacted at sbaker@cavih.com.

The post The Turnaround of the iProperty Group – Part 2 appeared first on Property Portal Watch.