The Carsales.com Ltd (ASX: CAR) share price jumped 3% in early trading on Wednesday after releasing its FY20 financial report to investors. The ASX 200 (ASX: XJO) was up 0.8%.
Carsales’ update follows that of fellow automotive industry business, Bapcor Ltd (ASX: BAP), which also released its report today. Click here to view the Bapcor annual report update.
Carsales.Com’s report highlights
Here are the headlines from the Carsales’ report:
- Revenue up 1% to $418 million
- Profit up 6% to $13o million
- A final dividend of 25 cents, in-line with 2019
Australia’s leading online vehicle sales portal said its FY20 result was robust and reflects the strength of its core Australian business.
Scratching the surface on the headline figures reveals a 10% increase in revenue from car dealers on its network, taking revenue to $168.7 million for the year. Car dealerships will pay Carsales, for example via a subscription or per vehicle advertising campaign, to advertise their cars and feature them prominently to users. Interestingly, revenue from car dealers rose but revenue from private sellers took a tumble, falling 5% year over year.
It’s probably not surprising to know that revenue from private transactions slowed down given the restrictions and social distancing measures throughout Australia (and elsewhere) as a result of COVID-19. Media advertising fell 22% year over year to $50 million as new car sales fell 14%.
More broadly, new car sales across Australia have been falling for some time. According to the FCAI, in July 2020, new car sales were down 12.8% year over year, dragged lower by Victoria — the second-largest state for vehicle sales.
During COVID-19, Carsales provided a 100% rebate of fees to dealers in April and (new cars) in June, and a 50% rebate in May.
This coincided with a decline in transactions via the Carsales platform, which explains why the company may have felt compelled to offer ‘discounts’. However, it always worries me when a wide-moat business (i.e. one which is the leader of an industry) feels compelled to waiver fees or charges. This resulted in a $28 million hit to net profit.
Pleasingly, in South Korea, where Carsales owns the dominant Encar website, the business was not significantly affected. In fact, operating profit from the Korean business rose 18% in the local currency. In Latin America, where Carsales owns smaller stakes in similar businesses, COVID-19 is regrettably still having a deep impact on countries and markets. International businesses now account for the equivalent of 24% of group ‘look-through’ revenue.
Zooming out a bit, it was pleasing to know traffic to Carsales’ websites was robust as I think it sets the scene for more demand for its products in time.
“Our longstanding strategy of investment in new products that provide the best experience and solutions for our customers continues to drive our market leadership position,” CEO Cameron McIntrye said.
“The 30% growth in our global traffic substantiates this investment. It has been extremely pleasing to see us continue to extend our market leadership position in our two largest markets, Australia and South Korea.”
In Australia, traffic rose 8%.
Financials
Carsales will pay shareholders a fully franked final dividend of 25 cents per share, in-line with last year. That takes the full-year dividend payments to 47 cents — a 2.3% yield at current share prices. The $105 million of dividends paid in the past year was underpinned by free cash flow (my calculation) of around $138 million.
On the balance sheet, Carsales had $180 million of cash, with debt and leases to the tune of $605 million. Carsales said it refinanced, increased and extended its credit facilities for liquidity purposes.
Buy, Hold or Sell?
I reserve all of my buy, hold or sell recommendations for our Rask Invest community. That aside, I think this was a steady-as-she-goes result from Carsales.
While the short-term uncertainty presents some obvious challenges, I think it’s only a matter of time before private sales come back to the Australian business since the short-term trend toward increased used car ownership (thanks to COVID) will bring more folks back to the platform. The counterpoint to that thesis would be more people working from home — which requires less travel.
If Carsales can compound/grow its profit at a rate of 3-5% per year and pays a reliable dividend, the reality is a 5% – 8% yearly return from an investment could produce a market-beating result on the stock market over the next five years.
That said, if you’re looking for companies capable of growing much faster (I know I am) or those that pay bigger dividends, I think there are better options available on the market right now. You’ll find some share ideas in our free investment report (see below), or on our ASX growth shares page.
