Baltic Classifieds Group PLC on Wednesday cheered record high individual advertising volumes and strong performances across all businesses lines as it disclosed bumper growth in sales and profitability.

In the financial year ended April 30, pretax profit rose 32% to €34.9 million from €26.4 million a year prior. Revenue increased 19% to €72.1 million from €60.8 million.

Core classifieds revenue streams business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer, which together comprise 90% of total revenue, grew 22% and 18% respectively. the company said.

‘We also saw [unprecedented] growth in the individual advertising volumes on our verticals as numbers of C2C active ads in Auto were up 26%, in Real Estate up 20% and in Services up 32%. Listings on our Generalist platform also grew 5%,’ the company said.

Adjusted basic earnings per share grew 20% to 9.2 euro cents from 7.7 cents while basic EPS advanced 40% to 6.5 cents from 4.7 cents.

In response, shares in Baltic Classifieds, the online classified ads portal provider in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, climbed 4.0% to 250.55 pence each in London. It was the best performing stock in the FTSE 250 mid-Wednesday morning.

The company said price increases across the business had seen an improvement in yields and average revenue per user.

Chief Executive Justinas Simkus said it was ‘another year of solid financial, operational and strategic execution’.

Looking ahead, Baltic Classifieds is guiding to 15% revenue growth in financial 2025, with Auto, Real Estate and Jobs & Services expected to grow marginally ahead of this number and Generalists below the overall average.

The growth will be driven by B2C, ARPU and C2C yield expansion, the firm added.

Going forward, the board expects continued marginal earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation margin expansion including continued investment in product development.

In the financial year just ended, Ebitda margin was 77% up from 76% the year prior.

The company said it remains committed to the existing capital allocation policy which remains focused on allocating excess cash towards reducing gross debt and the share buyback programme, particularly in the absence of M&A opportunities.

A final dividend of 2.1 euro cents per share was proposed, up 24% from 1.7 cents a year before. This makes the total payout 3.1 cents, also up 24% from 2.5 cents a year ago.

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