Australia has produced many quality companies. Fortunately for Australian investors some of the very best are listed on the ASX. As investors it is our job to grasp onto these companies when the opportunity arises. Carsales.Com Ltd (ASX:CAR) SEEK Limited (ASX:SEK) and REA Group Limited (ASX:REA) all fit this description. All three hold dominant market positions obtained by being first movers into their respective online space.
Carsales.com.au
Dominance is not a word that should be used lightly when describing a company, but it truly fits Carsales. Carsales as the name suggests controls the bulk of the marketing of new and used car sales. Just last year in an attempt to break Carsales' hold on the market, new car dealers began withdrawing cars from Carsales' website only to return when faced with dwindling sales. Even competitors offering to sell cars for free have had little impact on its ever growing profits.
Realestate.com.au
Among real estate agents, realesate.com.au is affectionately known as the Mafia. If you want to sell your home you pay what realestate.com.au asks. Just like Carsales, realestate.com.au is the market leader for home sales. Its dominant position allows it to charge considerably more than its nearest competitor domain.com.au owned by Fairfax Media Limited (ASX:FXJ). With the backing of Newscorp, the REA Group has expanded overseas and looks set to replicate its success in the American residential real estate market.
Seek.com.au
If REA is known as the Mafia then perhaps SEEK should take on the role of the Godfather. SEEK's command of the employment market is highlighted by its web traffic data. SEEK's domestic website receives over 35-million hits a month and its international arm over 340-million hits in the same time period. Its latest results presentation claims it now covers over 4 billion people. With over half of SEEK's revenue and EBITA coming from outside Australia, SEEK has proven its model is transferrable worldwide. The jewel in the crown of SEEK's international arm is a majority stake in Zhaopin Ltd (ADR) (NYSE:ZPIN), the leading employment website in China. Zhaopin is uniquely poised to capitalise on the mass movement of the Chinese middle class from blue to white collar jobs.
