The Seek Ltd (ASX: SEK) share price is down 14% after the ASX tech share reported its FY26 result and gave guidance.
Seek is best known as the leading employment portal in Australia.
FY26 result
Here are the main highlights for the result of the 12 months to 30 June 2026:
- Net revenue up 10% to $1.2 billion
- Total expenses up 8% to $821 million
- EBITDA (EBITDA explained) rose 15% to $530 million
- Adjusted net profit up 28% to $199 million
- Statutory net loss of $307 million
- Free cashflow up 21% to $246 million
- Annual dividend per share up 13% to $0.52
What happened in the result?
The company said that it saw yield growth of 18% across the Asia Pacific region, the sixth consecutive year of double-digit growth.
In ANZ, revenue grew 12% and the paid ad yield grew 14%. It benefited from increased depth adoption following the launch of upgraded advertisement tiers and the advanced advertisement in the second half of FY25.
Value-based pricing linked to customer return on investment (ROI) also contributed, as did increased ad performance and high-fit applications, which improved the placement predictability and likelihood, as well as inflation-linked pricing changes.
However, ANZ job ad volumes were down 2% year on year, as a weaker economic climate weighed on hiring activity in the second half of FY26. New Zealand job ad volumes were up 8% after several years of decline.
Asia revenue increased by 3%, with the paid job ad yield growing 20% year on year. The advanced ad launched in the first half of FY26 in Asia. It also benefited from value-based pricing linked to the customer ROI. Paid job ad volumes declined 12%, reflecting the transition to ‘freemium’ and weaker economic conditions, particularly in Hong Kong.
Operating expenses grew 6% and capital expenditure increased 17% as a result of continued investment in its product, technology and AI teams, as well as growth in IT infrastructure and compute costs to support its platform.
What was there a net loss?
Seek said that its reported loss was $307 million for continuing operations and $371 million of total operations.
This comprised an adjusted net profit of $207 million, a net loss of $201 million from the Seek growth fund and $377 million of significant items.
The $377 million largely relates to a previously announced $356 million total impairment charge recorded against its Zhaopin investment and a $9.5 million performance fee payable to the fund’s manager to reflect the increase in JobAdder’s value under the fund’s management.
Seek also said that the sale of its stake in Employment Hero is still in progress and it’s in discussions about the near-term sale of investments that are currently valued at over $1 billion. Seek said it would provide further details before the end of the 2026 calendar year.
Outlook for the Seek share price
Seek gave guidance that suggested mid-single-digit growth (in percentage terms) in FY27.
Revenue is expected to be between $1.21 billion to $1.28 billion, EBITDA is expected to be between $530 million to $580 million and adjusted net profit is guided to be between $185 million to $215 million.
If the company achieves the mid-point of the guidance, that would be 5% revenue growth, 6% EBITDA growth and 3% adjusted net profit growth.
Seek said the short-term outlook reflects the ongoing global uncertainty, but it thinks it can achieve 10% yield growth along with productivity gains.
The Seek share price is now down significantly (more than 40% in the past year) and the company expects to grow earnings, so it’s quite possible it could be undervalued. I think it’s doing the right things by shareholders.
But, there’s a cloud of AI uncertainty over the company’s medium-term future, so there could be better ASX growth shares out there to consider.
