Rightmove (RMV) continues to shrug off falling UK housing transactions and valuations. The property portal grew sales by a tenth, underlying operating profit by 11 per cent to £101m and beat earnings forecasts from several analysts as rising customer traffic led to a welcome influx of advertising money.
“Restless innovation” paved the way for a record 830m website visits during the reported six-month period, indicating that a lack of UK property transactions has failed to curb the nation’s interest in window-shopping. A 5 per cent increase in online traffic translated into a 74 per cent share of the house-hunting portal market, giving Rightmove the upper hand over newly listed rival OnTheMarket (OTMP) and its main competitor Zoopla (ZPG). Crucially, it's also managed to squeeze more money from advertisers – average revenue per advertiser (ARPA) rose by £76 to £987 a month.
This impressive feat, coupled with management’s confident forecast that full-year ARPA growth will be around £80, was slightly overshadowed by membership numbers, however, which rose just 0.1 per cent to 20,450. Judging by the reaction to these results – the shares were down 3 per cent in afternoon trading – investors interpreted news that more agents and developers aren’t swarming to Rightmove’s platform as a sign the group isn't immune to wider issues across the UK property market.
Analysts at Peel Hunt are forecasting adjusted pre-tax profits for the year to December 2018 of £211.3m and EPS of 193.2p, up from £195.7m and 174.3p in 2017.
| RIGHTMOVE (RMV) | ||||
| ORD PRICE: | 4,906p | MARKET VALUE: | £4.44bn | |
| TOUCH: | 4,905-4,907p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 5,396p | LOW: 3,873p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | 1.2% | PE RATIO: | 29 | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 24p | NET CASH: | £24m | |
| Half-year to 30 June | Turnover (£m) | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
| 2017 | 120 | 87.5 | 76.6 | 22.0 |
| 2018 | 131 | 98.1 | 87.5 | 25.0 |
| % change | +10 | +12 | +14 | +14 |
| Ex-div: | 4 Oct | |||
| Payment: | 2 Nov |
