For an Ambitious Regional Car Portal, A Long Road Ahead

iCar Asia CEO Damon Rielly discusses the following issues: 

- Sept 2012 ASX listing - issues 

- Why an ASX listing 

- Catcha Media - synergies 

- Earnings: junior - revenues of just 300,000 Aussie dollars in 2012, and operating losses of 1.8 million Aussie, itself a great deal higher than the year earlier.What’s the story behind the numbers? 

- CarSales.com stake purchase - A$13.4 million for 19.9 percent for ICarAsia -- @ 37.5 cents - multiples - percentage cash

- CarSales.Com’s earnings, it’s a pretty successful model: nearly A$200m, profits of A$70m and therefore margins of nearly 40%! But Australia is a homogenous and developed market - quite unlike Southeast Asia. How do you plan to crack the code? This ASEAN code? 

- How closely are you watching the CarSales.Com model and how much of it can be adopted here? 

- Growth by acquisition - this has been the growth strategy - fast it may be but how has integration gone? 

- Are you done buying yet? 

- This regional growth model also means potentially losing touch with local market nuances ,, would it be fair to say that PaulTan’s personalised approach gives him a better relationship than the centralised ICarAsia approach? 

- Buying LifeLiveDrive 

- Key criteria you have in deciding to acquire a site and how much emphasis is placed on sustained visitor traffic flow as compared to rapid short term growth

- Accenture rightly notes that Malaysian car buyers visit a ton of different websites -- 11 or so at last count -- prior to making a car purchase - distance from winning referral income from manufacturers

- Traffic rankings - Malaysia - Thailand - Indonesia - Effective Measure? Alexa? Google Rankings itself? These can be pretty arbitrary .. 

- Combined regional traffic - and potential for monetisation

- Ads / sponsorships - model? CPM? CPC? 

- Print - Malaysia - Evo -- competition! 

- Ad rates - discounting? 

- Malaysia is still the biggest contributor -- and Evo’s print ads is the biggest contributor, not online listings or ads 

- Indonesia is a costly market - -

What’s the branding and marketing strategy? Individual marketing plans for each site or a concerted integrated push? 

- But very little money was spent on marketing in 2012 - This cash of c. A$6.3M on the BS -- earning a weighted average effective interest rate of 0.92% -- could a better use be made of the money 

- Capacity / willingness of dealers to pay for listings when they have their own websites / marketing channels and free sites to choose from.