No-Moat Asian Online Marketplaces Showing Signs of Competitive Pressure

We expect Seek’s near-term challenges to center around navigating a return to trend in the Australian and New Zealand, or ANZ, employment market. After the onset of the covid-pandemic, supportive fiscal and monetary policy, as well as changing societal attitudes toward work and work life balance, led to the great resignation and a booming jobs market, boosting Seek’s ANZ business. We estimate revenue from Seek’s ANZ business was around a third above trend in fiscal 2023. However, Seek also more than doubled expenses in its ANZ business since the pandemic, leading us to believe it will be challenged with material operating deleverage when the employment market normalizes.