Significant rebound of their business since H2 20

Freelancer has 3 businesses :
- Freelancer- marketplace for people working freelance,
- Escrow - Secure online payment (acquired in 2016),
- Freightlancer- online freight services, owned at 53 % by Freelancer.

There was a lot of hype around this company initially (IPO at 0.50 $).
This was justified as there were 3 main interesting elements : growing markets, high margin (GM of 80 %+) and very low level of required Capex. It was a typical case where the company could expect a significant operating leverage.

After a significant initial increase, the share price came back around its IPO price, as the company kept disappointing the market with limited top line growth both for Freelancer and Escrow.
Total revenues increased by only 12 % between FY 16 (52.7 m AUD) and FY 20 (58.8 m AUD).

There has been a clear rebound of their business (in USD*) since H2 20 (July-Dec 20).
* 72 % of their revenues are in USD (vs 4 % in AUD).
During H2 20 :
- the freelance division increased its GPV by 17.7 % (vs + 6.1 % for FY 20),
- and Escrow had an increase of its GPV by 34 % (vs + 15.5 % for FY 20).
During Q1 21 (Jan-March 21), there has been a further acceleration for both businesses : + 24 % for the freelance business and + 43.7 % for Escrow.

This has also been reflected in the cash flow figures, as Q1 21 cash flow from operation was 4.2 m (vs 0.47 m for Q1 20 and 7.9 m for FY 20).
"Freelancer, Escrow and the group were all profitable in Q4 20 and H2 20".
Escrow was still profitable during Q1 21.
According to the last elements communicated by the company, there was no deceleration in Q2 for their freelance and escrow businesses.

Of course, the main question is to wonder if the company has finally turned the corner and will be able to maintain such a top line growth.
As usual, the answer is probably quite subjective.

Main reasons I have found to justify the rebound of their businesses :
- covid has probably been an accelerator for the freelance business, but it was not fully reflected initially in their figures, as the average project size has decreased initially by 25 %; it has rebounded later on** (and could explain part of the acceleration during H2 21),
- the freelance business also benefits from the strong growth of their Enterprise business, which GMV has increased by 62 % qoq in Q4 20 and by 83 % yoy in Q1 21,
- the escrow business benefits from the strong growth of their underlying markets (digital assets like domain names and physical merchandise including cars),
- the escrow business is also progressively benefiting from recent agreements signed with EBay for cars (same agreement to be implemented for watches from May 2021) and from new partnerships with marketplaces.

** average completed project size went from 216 USD at the beginning of 2020 to 161 USD in June 2020, then recovered to 172 USD in Q3 20 and 187 USD in Q1 21. The company says that it is a lagging indicator as it corresponds to projects posted in the past.
"non lagging metric on par with the 2018 all time high for completed project size".