Interim Management Statement
Embargoed for release at 07.00 hours, 6th November 2014
RIGHTMOVE PLC
INTERIM MANAGEMENT STATEMENT
Rightmove plc ("Rightmove"), the UK's number one property website, today
publishes its Interim Management Statement for the period from 1st July 2014 to
date. Financial and operating information relates to the period 1st July 2014
to 31st October 2014 unless otherwise stated.
Current trading
We have continued to see healthy growth in the last four months, building on
our performance in the first half of the year, as we help more consumers and
customers with more of their decisions around property:
* Membership is up 2% since the first half of the year and 5% year to date
and now stands at a record 19,320 agents and new homes developments
* Average Revenue per Advertiser (ARPA) continues to grow as customers invest
more on Rightmove advertising products to promote themselves and their
clients more strongly and gain the competitive edge in front of the UK's
largest and most engaged home moving audience
* Our audience continues to grow with home hunters visiting more often, and
searching and researching more property content than ever as evidenced by
page impressions up 7% on the same period last year. We continue to be
ranked in the top ten most popular websites in the UK alongside global
brands such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, eBay and Amazon
(Source: Experian Hitwise)
* The depth of engagement of our audience has increased further with 3.9m
enquiries generated for customers every month, up 12% from an average 3.4m
enquiries per month for the same period last year.
We have continued to promote the Rightmove brand with our `find your happy'
campaign to build on our market leading brand awareness and audience
engagement. This, coupled with continuous innovation across our platforms, has
increased engagement further with more home movers spending more time searching
for and researching property. This in turn has led to significantly more
enquiries for our customers and more vendors insisting their properties are
advertised on Rightmove. Mobile has an ever increasing role with nearly half of
our visits now coming from our highly rated mobile apps and mobile optimised
website.
During the period we launched an upgrade to our popular market intelligence
tools under the banner of `RightmoveIntel' to provide further insight into
local markets for our agents and ensure they have the competitive edge. Drawing
on the most comprehensive dataset available, RightmoveIntel builds on our
existing set of tools which are already used by 90% of our customers. Our price
comparable tool provides access to our archive of nearly 40 million properties
and over 200,000 reports are created every month by agents to support their
market appraisals for vendors. Our latest innovation enables customers to
pinpoint the locations of potential buyers and sellers both within their
immediate areas and beyond.
We have also re-launched our ever popular seminar programme with brand new
content which focuses on the 21st century home mover, their digital footprint,
and how agents can use Rightmove to better identify and understand the consumer
and their evolving property-related needs.
Agency & New Homes
ARPA for the period in both our Agency and New Homes business units showed
further growth compared to the first half of the year, reflecting the way our
customers compete by differentiating themselves via the adoption of our
additional advertising products and packages, and the effect of increases to
our membership fees.
Agency membership at the end of October stood at 16,913, a 1% increase since
the first half of the year, with the growth being driven by an increase in the
number of sales offices.
The number of new homes developments at the end of October stood at 2,407, up
5% since the first half of the year, reflecting a broadening of our developer
customer base and an increase in the number of developments from our existing
customers.
Other businesses
Our overseas homes advertising business continues to grow strongly with
customer numbers up 13% since the first half of the year to over 2,000.
Audience figures set new records in the period with nearly 30 million searches,
up 40% on last year. Rightmove now has 170,000 overseas homes advertised for
sale, an increase of over 50% compared to a year ago.
Our data services business continues to grow as we help a wide range of
customers, including banks and surveyors to leverage Rightmove's UK property
database, which is the largest of its kind covering nearly two-thirds of the UK
owner occupied and privately rented housing stock.
Our commercial property advertising business has established itself as the UK's
largest commercial property site with over 45,000 properties advertised and
over 30 million searches in the period, up more than double compared to the
same period in 2013.
Return of capital and financial position
As previously announced, an interim dividend of 13p per share will be paid on
7th November 2014 to shareholders on the register as at 10th October 2014. Cash
generation remains strong and since the announcement of the half year results
on 30 July 2014, the Company has acquired and subsequently cancelled 800,000
shares at a cost of £17.9m. As at 31st October 2014 Rightmove had £18.5m of
cash.
Outlook
With continued growth in customer numbers and average spend per advertiser, the
Board remains confident of meeting its expectations for the year.
Nick McKittrick, CEO, said:
"Rightmove's popularity with the British home moving public is going from
strength to strength. We have more home movers visiting more often and spending
more time than ever before, searching for and researching property from nearly
every agent in the UK. On the back of this record traffic we've increased
enquiries to our customers by over 10%."
Media enquiries
Please contact Brunswick Group on 0207 404 5959
rightmove@brunswickgroup.com
Tim Danaher