EANS-News: Hypoport AG
Hypoport Group grows by nearly 30 percent
Provisional results 2008
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Berlin (euro adhoc) - 17 March 2009: The strategy of diversification that Hypoport Group has adopted is proving its worth. Last year, the Group increased revenues by nearly 30 percent. The company has further expanded its market share in spite of difficult market conditions. In addition, the results enabled the growing company to make decisive investments in the next generation of its Europace platform. As a result, current earnings are slightly below the previous year's result in the interests of future development.
Hypoport, the internet-based provider of all-round financial services, managed to increase Group revenues by a further 29.3 percent to about EUR 53 million in fiscal year 2008 (2007 revenue: EUR 41 million). As a result, the Berlin-based growth company has been able to invest substantially in strengthening its future market position, in spite of the challenging market environment. The Group has been able to gain further market shares in Germany by increasing its focus on marketing and sales. These efforts were joined by considerable investments in IT to push ahead with the development of the next generation Europace platform, which will cover an even broader spectrum of products. As a result of this additional expenditure, which aims to strengthen the Group's position in the market, EBITDA was slightly below the previous year's result at EUR 8.1 million (EBIT 2007: EUR 8.7 million). Ronald Slabke, Co-CEO, explains the company's strategy as follows: "We are focusing all our efforts on taking advantage of the opportunities on offer in order to emerge from the crisis as one of the winners. We are convinced that these investments will significantly enhance our ability to compete and will put us in a stronger position to firmly establish our platform standard and our range of services in the marketplace".
All business divisions contributed to the growth in revenues. The "Corporate real estate clients" division was particularly dynamic, posting growth in excess of 40 percent, followed by the "Private clients" and "Financial service providers" divisions with growth rates of about 30 percent each. Prof. Dr. Thomas Kretschmar, the second Co-CEO at Hypoport, sees the results as confirmation that the Group has adopted the right strategy of diversification: "Difficult times prove that we were right not to put all of our eggs in one basket. The growing earnings from more successful business divisions can compensate those other business divisions that are faced with more severe margin pressure. As such, the combination of all business models together allows the company overall to make full use of the opportunities for growth offered by the current market environment. We want to rank among Germany's major providers of financial services in a few years' time. In addition to the strong growth, of which we are already proving ourselves capable, we expect EBIT margins to outperform the industry average over the long term given that our IT overheads allow our internet-based business model to systematically exploit economies of scale as it continues to grow".
About Hypoport AG Hypoport Group is an internet-based all-round financial services provider based in Berlin. The Group employs more than 450 people. The company has been listed in the Prime Standard on Deutsche Börse since the end of 2007. Its business model consists of two reciprocally beneficial pillars - the sale of financial products (Dr. Klein & Co. AG) and the provision of a platform for transacting financial products via the internet.
Hypoport operates the Europace B2B financial marketplace, which is the largest German online platform for transacting financing products. A fully integrated system links more than 30 banks with several thousand financial advisors, thus enabling the quick and direct agreement of contracts. The platform's highly automated processes generate considerable cost benefits. Nowadays, Europace processes some 400 financing transactions every day. Hypoport AG publishes the monthly house price index (HPX) based on real transaction data.
A list of the banks and service providers that use the platform can be found at http://www.hypoport.de/partner.html. The presentation of the provisional results for fiscal year 2008 is available for download at http://www.hypoport.de/publikationen.html.
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Further inquiry note:
Michaela Reimann
Group Communications Manager
Telefon: +49 (0) 30 42086 1936
E-Mail: michaela.reimann@hypoport.de
Branche: Financial & Business Services
ISIN: DE0005493365
WKN: 549336
Börsen: Börse Frankfurt / regulated dealing/prime standard
Original content of: Hypoport AG, transmitted by news aktuell