Transcript

1x EBITDA · STR Unpacked

Ben: Good morning and welcome to your short-term rental bulletin on the 19th of August. So, Home2Go has published its half-year figures around 7 o'clock this morning and the headline numbers are strong. Revenue up 72 % to €160 million. Free cash flow swung from €-5 million a year ago to €-48 million. A full-year guidance held it at €400-410 million. If his name means nothing to you, That is not unusual because in Britain we pretty much haven't heard of this brand. But Home2Go is a Berlin-founded Frankfurt-listed business that started Lice as a meta-search site, pulling together listings from Airbnb, Booking.com and Verbe. So travellers could compare them across all brands. It sponsors Union Berlin, but it barely advertises over here in the UK. So the company... that reported this morning is not really that company anymore. It's a business to business arm now that carries about 66 % of group revenue and revenue there more than tripled to 105 million euros. That arm owns Interhome, the property management group it bought from Hotelplan last August. It also owns Smubi, the management software a lot of homes pay monthly subscription for. And it also owns Kruscheier in Germany. The announcement worth your attention sits further down the release. So Home2Go has put Interhome and Crochet under a single new umbrella brand called Home2Go Originals. Covering more than 20 countries, it says that the brand is deliberately built to plug and play. So future property management acquisitions can be folded straight in. Read that against what the company disclosed back in May. It had already bought the contract books of three local agencies in Spain, Italy and Switzerland, roughly 200 units between them and a multiple of one times EBITDA. So a booking platform steadily buying European property management companies and what it's paying for a small agency is around one times earnings. So if you manage a property in Europe, that figure is now in the room every time you talk about what your own portfolio is worth. it is also the figure an acquirer is likely to quote back at you. So when your distribution channel starts buying your competitors, find out what it is actually paying for someone offers it to you. That is your Wednesday bulletin. Thank you for watching. I'll see you tomorrow.