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Overseas
Message from the CEO of LIFULL CONNECT
LIFULL CONNECT supports individuals in making some of the most significant decisions of their lives through over 200 websites that provide information on housing, cars and jobs in approximately sixty countries and regions worldwide.
During FY 2023/9, we expanded our client network and business spectrum through the strategic acquisitions of FazWaz, a tech-enabled agency in Southeast Asia, and Lamudi Mexico, a major real estate portal in the region. Despite these advancements, the global environment presented numerous challenges and online search behaviors have been changing, resulting in outcomes that fell short of our original plans for the year.
Since 2016, I have served as the full-time internal auditor for the LIFULL Group. Given the current circumstances and my experience with international business operations, though, I was appointed as a director of LIFULL starting in December 2023 and charged with overseeing our businesses outside of Japan.
We are now in the process of restructuring our organization and reviewing our growth strategies. Moving forward, we plan to develop closer working relationships with our teams in Japan, improve profitability, and create even more helpful services for our users.
Director
LIFULL CONNECT CEO
SHISHIDO Kiyoshi
Business Overview
LIFULL CONNECT provides a vast array of services, including aggregation sites such as Trovit, Mitula, Nestoria, and Nuroa for real estate, jobs, cars, and various other areas. In our key growth regions, Latin America and Southeast Asia, we also offer real estate portals such as Lamudi, Properati, Dot Property, and others. Additionally, we operate FazWaz, a tech-enabled agency that works directly with buyers and sellers.
Through our services, we aim to enhance the value we provide to both real estate professionals and users by offering the optimal platform and service for each region. By leveraging our extensive worldwide audience and data, we strive to deliver increased value to people globally and advance the real estate markets in each region.
Primary Businesses
- Aggregation Sites (Trovit, Mitula, Nestoria, Nuroa)
- Real Estate Portals (Properati, Lamudi, etc.)
- Tech-enabled Agency (FazWaz)
Overview of FY 2023/9
LIFULL CONNECT is currently pursuing a strategy of "Moving to Direct," which focuses on enhancing the value of our services for both users and professional clients by shifting towards services that are closer to the actual transactions.
During FY 2023/9, we continued to implement this strategy in Latin America and Southeast Asia through two strategic acquisitions. In Latin America, we acquired Lamudi Mexico, one of the leading real estate portals in the region. This acquisition has strengthened our sales teams and made significant progress toward increasing Average Revenue Per Agent (ARPA). In Southeast Asia, we acquired FazWaz, a tech-enabled transactional service in Thailand. Following the acquisition, we have increased transactional volumes, expanded our headcount, and improved agent efficiency. We anticipate that our tech-enabled agency will continue to drive business growth in the future.
Meanwhile, global conditions and the financial sector remain uncertain, with sluggish real estate recovery in many major markets. Significant consolidations and bankruptcies among portals worldwide have altered our client composition and led to reductions in advertising budgets, resulting in lower revenue for our Premium Advertisement products offered through our aggregation sites.
Looking ahead, we are revising our management structure and reevaluating our business plans to prioritize the recovery of revenue growth and profitability.
Revenue for FY 2023/9 amounted to ¥8,668 mil. (+20.4% YoY) primarily due to new acquisitions. In July 2022, we transferred all shares of Kleding B.V., operator of Fashiola. Removing the effects of this transfer, revenue has grown by 30.3% YoY. Segment profit declined to ¥3 mil. (-99.4% YoY) primarily due to reduced revenue from the aggregation services and optimization of personnel and one-off increases in personnel costs.
Topics
Progress in Moving to Direct
In 2019, we merged the assets of Trovit Search, S.L.U. (acquired in 2014) and Mitula Group Limited (acquired in 2019) to form LIFULL CONNECT. Initially focused on aggregating housing, car, job, and fashion listings, we have since diversified our service offerings to include richer, more localized information. This strategic shift has enabled us to allocate more revenue to our Direct (real estate portal and transactional) services, accelerating business growth.
While revenue from our aggregation sites has decreased compared to FY 2022/9, we are experiencing robust growth in our Direct services, bolstered by the acquisitions of Lamudi Mexico and FazWaz, which have expanded our client network. In FY 2024/9, we have decided to readjust our management structure to foster closer collaboration with our Japanese operations and drive a recovery in profitability.
