Freelancer divisional performance
Freelancer core marketplace
Freelancer added 1.86m new users (down 4.1% y-o-y) and saw 171k projects added to
the marketplace (flat quarter-on-quarter and down 16% y-o-y). The average project
size of
US$395 was 53% higher year-on-year and 8% higher quarter-on-quarter. The average number
of bids per project was 21% higher year-on-year at 57 and average entries per contest
more than doubled to 846. The company tracks new client deposits over the first 28
days as a lead indicator of customer acquisition. This was 7.6% higher year-on-year
in US dollar terms. The company plans further enhancements to its customer acquisition
processes in Q425.
GMV contributed by AI-related projects is growing rapidly, albeit from a small base.
The chart below shows the progression of AI-related GMV. In Q4, the business will
be extending its AI capabilities to improve project-to-talent conversion, engagement
and overall marketplace efficiency.
| Exhibit 2: AI-related jobs – GMV in US dollars |
 |
| Source: Freelancer |
Freelancer enterprise business
The enterprise business has made progress in the following areas:
- A global cloud computing platform will position Freelancer as a service provider to
18,000 small/medium business customers, with customers already live.
- A concierge service is being launched to provide operational support, including specialised
talent sourcing for premium enterprise customers.
- Global fleet for generative AI: engagements are ongoing with multiple technology and
service providers for large-scale AI training and data operations. The business has
introduced an automated credential management system to scale the deployment of freelancers.
The product team has started working on advanced demographic profiling and intelligent
search capabilities to rapidly identify and match specialised talent with specific
project requirements.
- Global fleet for field services: one client has engineers fully trained and ready
to start operations this month. A major Indian retail group is close to completing
onboarding. The business is currently in the final contract stage for the supply of
over 5,000 field professionals to support product distribution across the Indian market
for a leading fintech platform.
- NASA: Freelancer ran several key initiatives during Q3 including the
US$6m NIH TARGETED Challenge, the NASA Moon Mascot Challenge, the NASA Sustainable Business
Model Challenge and the NIH Data Sharing (S-Index) Challenge.
- Government: the Bahrain Labour Fund mentoring programme, which places participants
in training with top-performing freelancers, continued to operate during Q3.
Loadshift
Loadshift achieved record monthly revenue in September (up 25.3% y-o-y) and record
quarterly revenue in Q325 (up 15.5% y-o-y). The business was profitable for Q325.
This was achieved through improvements in the award rate (+1.2pp to 28.4%), total
jobs awarded (+11.3% y-o-y to 3,512) and delivered loads (+8.2% y-o-y). Carrier engagement
was strong with 2.1 quotes per job in the first hour.
During the quarter, a new dashboard was launched to give operations teams real-time
visibility into platform activity and performance metrics. The business’s next priorities
are to focus on driving widespread user adoption of the in-app calling function, enhancing
and streamlining the carrier onboarding experience and implementing real-time GPS
tracking to improve customer visibility.
Escrow.com performance
Escrow.com processed domain name transactions (the largest vertical for this business)
with a GMV of
US$95.5m/ A$145.9m, down 3.7% y-o-y but up quarter-on-quarter. AI ventures and digital assets
made up a large proportion of transactions.
Last year, the company’s focus was on integrating with one of the largest shopping
cart platforms that processes more than
US$290bn in transaction volume per year and in Q325 the business continued to onboard partners.
The service for this platform is still in beta, but it has started processing transactions.
The company plans to ramp this carefully to ensure it can provide a good service in
this new vertical.
In Q3, the business formed new partnerships with multiple US-based businesses to integrate
Escrow.com payment systems. This includes Immobilium, a global luxury asset platform
with a network of 5,000 real estate agents, and Pitch Capital, an AI-powered capital
raising platform that has already helped secure
US$370m in funding for start-ups.
To improve service levels in the business, 24/7 customer support was rolled out in
Q3, including voice, email and chat support services. The business expanded its account
management team and transitioned to a global account management structure.
