For an Ambitious Regional Car Portal, A Long Road Ahead
Damon Rielly, iCar Asia
25-Jul-13 01:50
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iCar Asia CEO Damon Rielly discusses the following issues:
- Sept 2012 ASX listing - issues
- Why an ASX listing
- Catcha Media - synergies
- Earnings: junior - revenues of just 300,000 Aussie dollars in 2012, and operating losses of 1.8 million Aussie, itself a great deal higher than the year earlier.What’s the story behind the numbers?
- CarSales.com stake purchase - A$13.4 million for 19.9 percent for ICarAsia -- @ 37.5 cents - multiples - percentage cash
- CarSales.Com’s earnings, it’s a pretty successful model: nearly A$200m, profits of A$70m and therefore margins of nearly 40%! But Australia is a homogenous and developed market - quite unlike Southeast Asia. How do you plan to crack the code? This ASEAN code?
- How closely are you watching the CarSales.Com model and how much of it can be adopted here?
- Growth by acquisition - this has been the growth strategy - fast it may be but how has integration gone?
- Are you done buying yet?
- This regional growth model also means potentially losing touch with local market nuances ,, would it be fair to say that PaulTan’s personalised approach gives him a better relationship than the centralised ICarAsia approach?
- Buying LifeLiveDrive
- Key criteria you have in deciding to acquire a site and how much emphasis is placed on sustained visitor traffic flow as compared to rapid short term growth
- Accenture rightly notes that Malaysian car buyers visit a ton of different websites -- 11 or so at last count -- prior to making a car purchase - distance from winning referral income from manufacturers
- Traffic rankings - Malaysia - Thailand - Indonesia - Effective Measure? Alexa? Google Rankings itself? These can be pretty arbitrary ..
- Combined regional traffic - and potential for monetisation
- Ads / sponsorships - model? CPM? CPC?
- Print - Malaysia - Evo -- competition!
- Ad rates - discounting?
- Malaysia is still the biggest contributor -- and Evo’s print ads is the biggest contributor, not online listings or ads
- Indonesia is a costly market - -
What’s the branding and marketing strategy? Individual marketing plans for each site or a concerted integrated push?
- But very little money was spent on marketing in 2012 - This cash of c. A$6.3M on the BS -- earning a weighted average effective interest rate of 0.92% -- could a better use be made of the money
- Capacity / willingness of dealers to pay for listings when they have their own websites / marketing channels and free sites to choose from.
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