Market Herald ditches plans to become major publisher, doubles down on classifieds
Sam Buckingham-JonesMedia and marketing reporterNov 26, 2023 – 4.59pmListen to this article4 minThe new management team behind the owner of the HotCopper share trading forum and classifieds site Gumtree has done a dramatic about-face, scrapping plans to become the “Financial Times of South-East Asia” and instead says it will target Carsales, Seek and real estate.
Tommy Logtenberg, the new chief executive of The Market – known as The Market Herald until this month – said the turbulence that had plagued the company for the past year was over.
“Our spend on our corporate credit cards dropped by 63 per cent. And that’s almost the only thing that I want to share about the previous management team,” he said in his first interview since formally taking the reins of the company in March. “The business is now in a much better state. We have less costs, and we spend it wisely, and we invest in the business.”
The Market CEO Tommy Logtenberg and COO Twila Jensen. Louie Douvis
The Market owns business news sites The Market Herald (soon to be The Market Online), HotCopper and Stockhouse, as well as the former Gumtree Group – Gumtree, CarsGuide and Autotrader.
Former The Market Herald managing director Jag Sanger was ousted in December last year in a shareholder coup led by mining father-son duo David and Gavin David Argyle. A major shareholder, Duncan Saville, then complained to the Takeovers Panel, which made “unacceptable circumstances” findings against the Argyles.
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“We are not a newspaper publication, We are not publishing any newspapers, we are not going to publish any newspapers,” Mr Logtenberg said. “We are not going to compete with the AFR. What we do is capital markets, and we do classifieds, and that’s it.”
Former managing director of The Market Herald, Jag Sanger. Ross Swanborough
His first job on taking over The Market Herald was to refinance the Adevinta vendor loan, which was paying between 8 and 10 per cent. “It is now a $46 million loan. We will have repaid $5 million by the end of this year,” he said. The company is paying 6 per cent interest.
His second job was to slash sections of the business which he described as “heavily loss-making”.
“There was this TMH Fancy. We have a car leasing business – it’s not really in our strategic focus. We have 278 cars on our balance sheet. That doesn’t make sense,” he said.
Mr Logtenberg, who has followed Gumtree from its former owners at eBay, Adevinta and now The Market, said his focus would be on the Gumtree brands, which drive most of the revenue. Gumtree, a 23-year-old former market leader in classifieds, has lost huge share to Facebook Marketplace.
But it still has traction in four key verticals: cars, pets, jobs and services for hire. Mr Logtenberg said he would push to compete more in these areas – with the likes of Carsales, Seek and AirTasker. The next steps are an on-platform payments system, immediate cash for cars, and on-platform pet insurance.
“You need to select a couple of verticals where technically the yields are highest,” he said. Every week, 5000 cars are listed on Gumtree.
Gumtree was the market leader for pets, Mr Logtenberg said. “So why not also then offer insurance?”
Mr Sanger disputed the high corporate credit card bill and the change in strategy. “A year ago Gumtree had 110 per cent of Carsales’ private car listings. Today it has less than 30 per cent,” he said.
“I don’t know how being the leading listing site for puppy farms makes up the slack. They need to focus and focus quickly.”
Twila Jensen, who leads the capital markets business and is The Market’s chief operating officer, said while HotCopper’s reputation had been as a haven for day traders and dark ops investor relations, her goal would be to provide “trusted research for intelligent investors”.
“I understand that it has a colourful history and, you know, investors that have different agendas at the end of the day,” she said. “But by providing them with much more education, research and analysis by upgrading the financial tools on site, investors can make a much more intelligent decision and not rely on the forums as much as they previously would.”
