PropertyGuru, one of Southeast Asia’s leading property technology companies, announced today it has lodged a prospectus with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission for an IPO that could potentially raise ASD 363 million (USD257 million).
Founded in 2007, PropertyGuru operates digital property classifieds marketplaces in five countries across Southeast Asia, namely Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
Its intention to list in Australia was first reported by various outlets in early September. In 2018, it received a Series D funding of USD 145 million from US private equity firm KKR. The company claimed to be profitable and cash flow positive at that time.
In 2015, it raised USD 129 million from three investors: TPG from the US, Square Peg Capital from Australia and Indonesia-based media company Emtek Group.
PropertyGuru claims it serves about 23 million users monthly and has 60% consumer market share across its five operating markets in Southeast Asia.
Chairman Oliver Lim said in a press statement that housing demand in PropertyGuru’s markets is driven by strong population growth, urbanisation, smartphone penetration and rising wealth levels–and that such trends will continue shifting property advertising from print and other offline channels to online.
According to CEO Hari Krishnan, part of the proceeds will be used for potential expansion into “mortgage financing through an online mortgage marketplace and developing data offerings to our customers.”
Over the years, PropertyGuru has acquired a number of leading property listing sites in its respective Southeast Asian markets, including DDProperty (Thailand) in 2011, RumahDijual (Indonesia) in 2015 and Batdongsan.com.vn (Vietnam) in 2018.
Its main regional competitors are iProperty (which went public on the ASX in 2007 but delisted in 2016) and 99.co.
Update: In an earlier version of this article we called iProperty an ASX-listed company. The firm has however delisted from the stock exchange. We apologize for the mistake.