I agree with both @WINGMAN in his take that the business model is proven in Australia and gathering pace overseas but also agree with @Goldfish that the concealed marketing spend is significant. What happens if the revenue growth stops when the marketing stops!? Still even if UK and USA failed management could pull out of both and have a successful business in Australia. Would management really do this? I don’t know but I’m happy to pay a relatively modest price for the blue sky still on offer

oh forgot to mention used Airtasker for the first time the other day. We’re (not really) money rich time poor and did not want to spend 4 hours assembling the desk we got for our school aged daughter from ikea so we used ikeas Airtasker portal to tender it. Was a great experience and nice to see ikea giving Airtasker an in. Definitely a win win

@GazD Yes, exactly

My concerns are:

1. UK and/or USA might fail. At the moment they are spending in marketing 10 times what they are getting in revenue. Yes it worked in Australia, but there is more competition now in both of those markets.

2. AI. Is it now easier to "vibe-code" a basic alternative to Airtasker? It might not have to be as good if it were much cheaper. Airtasker is definitely not cheap. "Your margin is my opportunity"

On the positive side, the way they have structured the media partnerships they are only secured against the subsidiary (ie the UK or USA business). So if those businesses fail, the media partners only get equity in the failed subsidiary (which would be worth very little). ART the parent company could retreat to running the Australian business, relatively unscathed. Please someone correct me if I am wrong, because the above sounds too good to be true (Claude agrees with me, for what it's worth, although it raises the possibility of "undisclosed guarantees")

@Goldfish I've had ART on my watchlist for a while on the simple investment thesis you lay out; established Aus marketplace generating strong cash and that cash taken and used to try and grow fledgling marketplaces in UK and US.

But I agree I thought this result was weak and ART management keep stretching that core thesis. Revenue growth continues to be driven by the monetisation rate (up to 22.2% from 20.8% last year) which on one hand may be a good sign of a dominant platform but you can only squeeze your customers so much and I don't think ART is a sticky enough platform to take it too far. Booked tasks was only up 4.7% and a good chunk of that was "stimulus" tasks that ART put up themselves to try and get the US and UK moving in new cities.

The use of the media equity deals makes a lot of sense in the UK or US but I must admit they lost me with the Oohmedia and ARN deals in Aus. The thesis was Aus is profitable and generating significant excess cash flow. Why are they funding marketing through equity deals still? The cynic in me says it's because management underinvested in Australian marketing a couple of years ago and knew they had to ramp it back up but didn't want to dip into negative cashflow.

I've still got it on my watchlist just because scaled two sided marketplaces are probably the best businesses you can find but ART is making it difficult to put forward a genuine short term investment thesis. Long term if the US or UK comes off it's great value but the path to that remains as murky as ever.

@GazD I’m with you on both points. These are exactly the kinds of businesses AI will squeeze first — the ones built on simple, repeatable tasks with thin moats. As the tools get better, more people will just create what they need themselves. It’s a bit like when putting an ad in the paper used to be a whole process, and then suddenly anyone could do it in minutes. The margin disappears pretty quickly once that happens.

@Foxlowe i suppose in that sense it’s a race to build a defensible network effect/brand.consider REA, although I have no certainty my personal feeling is that they will sail through the AI crisis at least for the foreseeable future. Same for Carsales etc if you’ve got a brand which is strong enough and people are aware enough both sides of the two sided martlet will come there. Airtasker has the potential to build a moat based on trust. For example when I hired a dude to put out desk together the other day he had a 5 star rating based on 50+ jobs which gave me reassurance that he would 1) put the desk together well and 2) not assault anyone in my home!