Trading Statement

8 November 2024

Rightmove plc

Trading Update

Looking ahead with confidence

Rightmove plc, the UK's number one property portal, provides the following update on trading for the period from 1 July 2024.  Unless otherwise stated, figures relate to the four-month period ending 31 October 2024. 

Market update

Looking across the segments that we serve, we see greater optimism among our partners looking into 2025 than at this time last year.

Our latest leading property market data[1] shows a continuation of the trends indicated at our interim results on 26 July 2024.  House price growth remains positive, albeit subdued, and mortgage rates are stable with a favourable outlook for further potential bank rate cuts.  

Property transaction flow is improving, supporting business growth for our Estate Agency partners.  Rental price growth continues to moderate with an average enquiries per available property of 15.

Our New Homes developer partners are encouraged by the government policy support that has been announced, although new build activity remains softer than the prior year.

Guidance update

We are in line to meet market expectations for revenue and adjusted underlying operating profit for the year, and are tightening our 2024 guidance given at the interim results in July as follows:

• Revenue of approximately £390m (within our previous guidance of 7-9% growth)
• Reiterate guidance of adjusted underlying operating margin of 70%.  This will be before one-off costs of approximately £10m[2]
• Membership numbers are expected to grow by around +1% on 2023 (within our previous guidance of up to +2%), reflecting a slower-than-expected recovery in New Homes developments
• Average Revenue Per Advertiser (ARPA) growth of +£85-£95 on 2023's £1,431, higher than our previous guidance of +£75-£85, reflecting the successful sales and migration to the Optimiser Edge top-end package for Estate Agents, as well as product uptake across both Estate Agent and New Homes partners.

We expect to see a modest acceleration in revenue growth in 2025 from the full-year impact of Optimiser Edge uptake, product-led growth across our Core business, and continued progress within our Strategic Growth Areas of Commercial Property, Mortgages and Rental Services.

Current trading and outlook: looking ahead with confidence

Reinforcing our network effect by delivering consumer and partner value

Rightmove remains the place to which consumers turn first and return most - representing over 80% of all consumer time spent on UK property portals.[3]  Our cross-channel consumer marketing is focused on ensuring that we are front of mind for UK home-movers: in H2, this has included our sponsorship of `The Voice' on ITV1 and ITVX which reached over 14 million people, and the next phase of our brand campaign across social, video, out-of-home and Rightmove platforms which is expected to reach 95% of UK adults.  We also increased our social media presence with an 89% increase in engagement during the period.[4]  We continue to innovate at scale and pace to drive engagement with our platform: within our Affordability product suite we launched the Renovation Calculator[5] for consumers, with 20% of users tracking a property since launch adding a renovation.

Lead generation remains strong, with 20% more leads sent to our resale and dual partners in the period.  This delivers superior outcomes to our partners, with Rightmove providing 73% of sales outcomes and 85% of lettings outcomes in 2024 year-to-date.[6] 

Divisional update and outlook

Within our Core business, we have successfully executed on Rightmove's longstanding approach to contract renewals, which are now complete for the year and continue to deliver product-led ARPA growth. 

In Estate Agency, we expect growth in 2025 to be supported by the continued migration from Optimiser 2020 to Optimiser Edge, as well as increased product uptake and contract renewals.  We began to migrate partners to Optimiser Edge in August, and now have over 3,000 branches on this top package.  We expect the migration to be materially complete within the next 12 months.

Within New Homes, we are now starting to see slightly more developments on site and expect ongoing growth during 2025.  ARPA remains strong as developers continue to turn to our products for their marketing needs.

Our Strategic Growth Areas of Mortgages, Commercial Property, and Rental Services continue to perform in line with our expectations.  Within Mortgages, we have delivered >150% more leads to our lender and broker partners year-on-year, and recently launched a remortgage product within Track a Property, supporting the introduction of further leads to our broker partners.  Our Commercial Real Estate team relaunched the site in September, with a new Commercial landing page[7] and lead-generating product, as well as media and partner outreach, all aimed at further strengthening our leading position.  Within Rental Services, referencing volumes continue to grow and are up 13% year-on-year.  Our digital end-to-end rental solution for agents and landlords, Lead to Keys, has attracted over 140 new partners and over 275 existing Rightmove partners which means we are on track to hit our subscription targets for 2024.  

Johan Svanstrom, CEO of Rightmove, said:

"This has been another period of strong progress for Rightmove, and it's pleasing to see our product development and sales delivery generating increased uptake from consumers and partners.  As a result, we remain confident in achieving meaningful strategic and financial growth in 2024.  We see continued momentum building product depth across our platform - driving revenue growth in the core business and within our strategic growth areas.  We are excited to be the place consumers turn to first and return to most when looking to buy, sell or rent a property in the UK.  We see a long runway of opportunities, leveraging our superior platform and data scale to generate increased value for all stakeholders."

Enquiries:   

Investor Relations [e-mail]

Sodali & Co  [e-mail]

About Rightmove

• Rightmove has the UK's largest selection of properties for sale and to rent, adds more listings than anyone else, and over 80% of all time spent on property portals is on Rightmove.
• Rightmove's vision is to give everyone the belief that they can make their move by giving people the best place to turn and return to for access to tools and expertise to make it happen.
• People can search Rightmove for residential resale, new homes, rentals, commercial property and overseas properties and use tools and information including getting a Mortgage in Principle, checking local sold prices, property valuations, market trends, maps and schools.
• Partners include the following key groups: estate agents, lettings agents, new homes developers, rental operators, commercial property operators and overseas property agents.
• Using the UK's largest housing datasets, we issue a number of regular reports to track market indicators: our monthly House Price Index (established 2002), our quarterly Rental Trends Tracker (established 2015), a weekly Mortgage Rates Tracker (established 2023), and a quarterly Commercial Insights Tracker (established Q1 2024). Historical data is available on request.
• Founded in 2000, Rightmove listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2006 and is a member of the FTSE 100 index.

[1] House Price Index published on 21 October, for the period 8 September - 12 October; Rental Price Tracker published on 16 October for the period 1 July - 30 September; Mortgage Tracker published on 6 October.

[2] Reflects previously communicated costs related to the investments in Coadjute and Homeviews, as well as costs incurred in relation to the potential offer for Rightmove in September.

[3] 83% in September, the most recent month available. Source: Comscore MMX® Desktop only + Comscore Mobile Metrix® Mobile Web & App, Total Audience, Custom-defined list of Rightmove, Zoopla, PrimeLocation and OntheMarket platforms.

[4] 1 July - 31 October 2024 vs 1 July - 31 October 2023, for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok.  "Engagement" defined as reactions, comments, shares, saves, link clicks and profile actions.

[5] Renovation Calculator helps consumers to explore the added value that existing or planned renovation works might have on a property: see https://www.rightmove.co.uk/press-centre/rightmove-launches-new-renovation-calculator/

[6] Sales outcomes source: Street (January - October 2024), compared to all UK portals. Lettings outcomes source:  RLTS tenant survey, >180,000 tenants (January - October 2024), compared to all UK portals.  Question: "How did you find the property you are applying for?"

[7] https://www.rightmove.co.uk/commercial-property

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