Job board Seek (ASX: SEK) today reported revenue from continuing operations grew 20% on a constant currency basis.

The group saw revenue growth across APAC and continued growth in job ads across APAC.

Seek CEO and Managing Director Ian Narev said, “Across our Asia Pacific markets, demand for labour remained high during H1 23 which led to increased job ad volumes. In the second quarter, volumes reduced moderately across all markets, and had the usual seasonal variation. Yield increased through adoption of depth products, particularly in Asian markets. Seek maintained its market leadership positions with stable placement metrics and brand awareness, with JobStreet and JobsDB showing the benefit of last year’s increased marketing investment.”

Narev continued, “In Asia, a new budget-based contract structure based on our ANZ approach was implemented progressively across our six markets. This was a major milestone for the business, and a direct result of the Platform Unification program. The new contract structure has led to increased substitution of basic ad products with depth products, which combined with higher ad prices, is increasing yield. Cost growth moderated following increased investment in the prior period. We continued to invest in key strategic areas such as experimentation with the seekMAX platform, an online learning platform being piloted in Indonesia, and growing commercial and sales functions to reflect the large market opportunity.”

Revenue for continuing operations was broken down as follows.

Within Seek ANZ, the group said it saw high levels of candidate engagement during H1 2023. Job ad volumes grew, despite some moderation in Q2 2022.

Job ad volumes were up 1% over the previous year within Seek Asia. At the same time, candidate engagement benefitting from ongoing investment.

In Employment Marketplaces, total revenue in Zhaopin fell by 11% due to severe Covid-19 restrictions. At OCC, revenue growth of 28% was driven by higher ad volumes and increased yield.

Revenue in Brasil Online decreased by 9% with revenue impacted by the candidate business model transition (paid only to freemium).

“Platform Unification is progressing to plan and will be completed by the end of FY24,” Narev added. “We reached a number of key milestones including the migration of all hirer and candidate data from the Seek Asia platform to the Seek ANZ platform. We performed extensive scalability testing to ensure the platform can support increased data and traffic.”

“Across Latin America, results continue to be mixed,” Narev said. “The new model (for Brasil Online) is now driving improved hirer and candidate metrics, putting the business on-track for a sustainable break-even EBITDA run-rate by end of this calendar year. In China, Zhaopin has been impacted by severe Covid-19 restrictions. Revenue declined 11%, but cost control ensured that EBITDA was in line with H1 22.”

The company published FY 2023 guidance (excluding significant items) for Seek’s continuing operations forecasting revenue of approximately AUD 1.26 billion (USD 869.4 million), EBITDA of approximately AUD 560 million (USD 386.4 million) and Net Profit After Tax of approximately AUD 250 million (USD 172.5 million).