Hey guys, I’m quite new to this stock (and HotCopper) so...

Hey guys, I’m quite new to this stock (and HotCopper) so apologies if my below questions/comments are a bit stupid. I’ve recently taken a small position following the price fall over the last month or so but have wanted to do a bit more research before deciding whether to top up more and thought it might be worth just posing some of my thoughts here.

My main concern lies in the long-term revenue model for this stock. I’ve just finished going through the last two annual reports and for now it seems the company relies largely on agent subscription revenue. As I understand it, agents essentially will pay a subscription fee for a more prominent profile and “additional products and services”.

My first question is whether anyone knows what the additional products and services are that agents get out of the subscription fee which makes it worth paying the ongoing fee?

Secondly, I can appreciate that having a more prominent profile can put agents ahead of their competition when it comes to vendors looking for an agent to help sell their property for them. However what I’m struggling to comfortable with is that every single agent listed on the site seems to have between a 4.8-5 star rating. To me this makes it essentially impossible to really stand your profile out from your competitors when they all basically have exactly the same rating. I suppose it just makes me question how successful having a more prominent profile can really be for agents when it really doesn’t stand you apart all that much from your competition.

I’d be very interested to hear of anyone who is an agent or has spoken to an agent that pays for and uses the subscription fee service to see how much value they actually get out of it. I just worry that while it might be something that agents have been willing to pay for initially, if they’re finding that they’re not actually seeing a meaningful increase in their client base or revenue as a result of the service, then they may just decide it’s not worth it. I guess ultimately, I’m trying to understand the likelihood that an agent who initiates the subscription fee will maintain it for the long-term. I’m conscious the company has seen tremendous success with subscription revenue in Australia however I’m less clear on how sticky this revenue is and how much client churn/turnover they’re seeing in the agents that do sign up for this service (granted it’s still early days so it’s likely hard to get accurate data on this).

My final question/concern would be around competition. Conscious that until recently, there has been a lack of competition in the real estate review space however it seems that realestate.com has recently entered the space. My concern here would be that given a company like realestate.com already has a large, well-established position in the real estate market in Australia, what sort of impact their entry into the real estate review space might have on agent subscription revenues. Again it’s probably a difficult one to know for sure but I’d be interested in anyone else’s views on this area and whether it’s something that RMY should be able to hold its own in. It seems that Domain has gone down a different path by signing a syndication agreement with RMY so perhaps this is a sign they don’t feel they can effectively compete in this space while realestate.com feel they can. I guess time will tell…

Thanks, and apologies for rambling. I would love to see this company succeed long-term and I think the US market could be an amazing opportunity for it so fingers crossed that it works out!