Autotrader Group Plc (ATDRF) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Autotrader's half-year results for the six months to the 30th of September 2024. As usual, I'm joined by our COO, Catherine, and our CFO, Jamie, who will be both presenting and joining me for Q&A later. Our financial and operational performance in the first half demonstrates both the strength of our position and the strength of the partnerships we've built with our customers. Over this six-month period, we've had record levels of engagement and activity on our platforms. There are more buyers using AutoTrader, more retailers, more cars transacted than last year. While all of these dynamics are incredibly positive, the nature of these market dynamics has not necessarily benefited us in this set of results as much as you might expect. I'll come on to explain this shortly. On top of this growth in our core advertising marketplace metrics, we've made good progress with DealBuilder. With growth in the number of customers, the amount of stock, the number of deals generated, and have commenced monetizing the products. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I would like to say thank you to our people, customers, shareholders, and wider stakeholders for their continued trust in AutoTrader. Starting with some of the highlights during the year. At a group level, revenue grew 8%, operating profit grew 14%, and basic earnings per share grew 22%. In the core AutoTrader business, revenue growth was 9% and operating profit excluding the impact of digital services tax, which was recognised for the first time this year, was 10%. Retailer revenue growth of 8% was in line with our expectations, although the mix was not as expected. The number of retailer forecourts increased by 2%, largely through smaller independent and non-car customers. This mat...