is ipp a perennial gunna?, page-4

Fat Tony,

I understand the point your making in your post, but think its worth pointing out a few things that cross my mind reading it.

There is only ONE realestate.com.au in the world, no other property portal has been as successful as REA from a profitability/market cap perspective, just look how far above trend Australia is compared to the other countries in the recent iProperty presentation. The relevance to IPP is if you are holding out for it to be REA, this is unlikely, although we are playing in larger markets.

They did lose the battle in Singapore, which is disappointing and hard to get a gauge on the reasons, but hoping they can get that business to breakeven quickly to stop the drain on capital. The linking of Malaysia to Singapore via high speed rail is both positive and a concern at the same time with PropertyGuru in both markets. iProperty need to continue to build brand awareness in the region (maybe even on the high speed rail!).

Malaysia & Indonesia are the most important markets, if they can dominate those, this will be a good long term business.

Hong Kong & Macau sit nicely together and can hopefully pay their way, its an important part of the network as Chinese buyers would be very appealing to developers in the rest of Asia, as was proven by the savvy move to be the International Sponsor of the Beijing & Shanghai Property Expo's - this is a nice thing to sell to SE Asia property developers.

2nd qtr results will be interesting to see how quickly they grew revenue and preserved cash flow (SG). Hoping MY matures quickly and profit grows, with HK and IND close behind.

On the left field development front, a freemium model could hurt them, but not if they develop a dominate market position in a market.

Also worth noting that the Chairman brought a large stake in the UAE number 1 portal (propertyfinder.ae), but through the Catcha Group. I can't figure out why he wouldn't have done this through iProperty, except lack of cash on hand and I think Catcha is his private vehicle so price didn't need to be disclosed, etc. Hard to think he is acting in our best interests when he is buying similar assets for himself and not the company he chairs.