Purplebricks hiring, and its hires are hiring, to meet demand

Having floated on Aim in December last year, with a business model that sits somewhere between a high-street estate agent and a pure online operator, Purplebricks has made impressive progress, boosting revenue more than five-fold, news which sent the share price up by 7 per cent on results day. What's more, the operational leverage in its low cost business model meant that cash losses in the second half were 38 per cent smaller than in the first half. And before taking into account exceptional costs, gross profits jumped from £2m to £10.6m.

To cater for the increase in demand, Purplebricks has been recruiting more LPEs, with numbers up by 159 per cent at 205. This may not sound a lot, but LPEs can employ or sub-contract licensees, and more than 55 had already done so by the time of listing.

There are also plans to launch the Purplebricks model in Australia, where its flat fee structure is expected to be significantly cheaper than the cost of using the traditional estate agent model. An Australian management team is already in place, and around £10m will be invested out of existing cash resources over the next two years.

Prior to the numbers Whitman Howard was forecasting statutory pre-tax profits for the year to April 2017 of £5.66m and EPS of 2.36p.