10 May 2024
Rightmove
plc
Rightmove
plc
AGM
Update
Strong
Start to 2024; Reiterating Full Year Revenue and Margin
Guidance
Updating
ARPA Guidance to Reflect Increased Customer
Numbers
AGM
update
In advance
of its Annual General Meeting today, Rightmove plc, the UK's number
one property portal, provides the following update on trading for
the period from 1 January
2024.
Unless
otherwise stated, figures relate to the four-month period ending
30 April 2024.
Our
expectations for revenue and profit for the full year are
unchanged.
Market
update
Our most
recent monthly House Price Index[1]
reported
the average asking price for properties coming to market increasing
by 1.1% month-on-month, with annual house price growth of 1.7%, the
highest for 12 months.
Sales
agreed between January and April 2024
are 17% higher than the same period last year, with both sellers
and buyers now increasingly looking to transact, and we continue to
anticipate total sales transactions of 1.1 million in
2024.
Higher
mortgage rates continue to stretch affordability for the average
buyer, and the market is operating at different speeds across its
many segments and areas.
Completion
times remain lengthy, with an average of five months between an
offer being accepted and completion.
According
to our latest Rental Tracker[2],
the rental market remains very busy, with an estimated 50,000
properties needed to return the supply of rental properties to
pre-pandemic levels.
With an
18% increase in listings availability in the first four months of
2024 compared to the same period in 2023, rental agents received an
average of 14 leads per available property, and average rents were
7.6% higher than the same period in 2023.
Trading
update
Audience
update
Rightmove
remains the place to which consumers turn first - they continue to
choose Rightmove for over 80% of all consumer time spent on UK
property portals[3].
Our
consumers are also highly engaged - over 8 million users are opted
into our marketing, we sent over 19 million leads to agent
partners, and we delivered over 40% of email leads through our app
in the period.
Customer
update
Within
Estate Agency, net membership increased by c.250 since the 2023
year-end, due to strong agent retention and particular strength in
the lettings market (c.170 net growth in lettings-only branch count
and rental operators).
Our
digital end-to-end solution, Lead to Keys, attracted over 70 new
partners to Rightmove and over 170 existing partners added the
product to their subscription. Independent
agent subscriptions to Optimiser Edge now exceed 700, ahead of our
expectations when setting the plan for 2024.
Our
current expectation is that agent branches will increase by up to
2% during 2024 relative to 2023, ahead of our expectations earlier
in the year.
The
increase in membership numbers is positive for revenue and profit
and provides increased consumer choice on the Rightmove site.
Lettings-only agents typically have a lower ARPA, particularly
those with relatively low stock.
New Homes
has seen over 90 new developments added to our new, entry-level
Access package, which is tailored specifically to housing
associations.
As with
lettings-only agency branches, the additional developments are
positive for revenue, profit and consumer choice; housing
association ARPA is lower than for mainstream new homes
developments.
Based on
the overall market context for developers, we expect the total
number of developments for 2024 to remain relatively flat on
2023.
ARPA
growth, excluding the recent change in customer mix, would be in
line with our previous guidance of +£100-110.
There has
been no change to Rightmove's longstanding approach to contract
renewals and pricing, and our usual discussions in the period have
proceeded as expected.
Guidance
update
As a
result of the combined impact of the above, we now expect a
different mix of ARPA and customer numbers from that anticipated at
the start of the year.
We
therefore update guidance for 2024 as follows:
-
Full year
revenue guidance unchanged, at +7-9% on 2023
-
Full year
underlying operating margin guidance unchanged, at 70%
-
Customer
numbers expected to grow by up to +2% on 2023, versus previous
guidance of a slight decrease
-
ARPA
growth updated to +£75-£85 on 2023's £1,431, reflecting the change
in customer mix, as outlined above
Other
updates
Alongside
Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide and NatWest, we were pleased to
invest in Coadjute, a platform which aims to digitise the
home-moving process and to make it more efficient for consumers,
agents and the wider industry. We acquired HomeViews, the UK's
biggest community of verified resident reviews of property
developments, to enable our strategic opportunities within the
Rental Operator sector.
Our
Strategic Growth Areas of Mortgages, Commercial, and Rental
Services are all performing in line with our
expectations.
Within
Mortgages, we have had a positive start to the year, with strong
consumer interest and machine learning-led optimisation improving
the mortgage journey for consumers and improved outcomes for our
partners.
Our
Commercial re-platforming continues at pace, with a new landing
page expected later this year.
As set out
above, Rental Services continues to see strong uptake from lettings
agents, and our new Lettings customers will also build a pipeline
for Rental Services going forward.
We remain
focused on building success with our agent and developer partners,
providing real-time, tailored, digital solutions based on the
largest UK property datasets to help them to build their
businesses; free resources, training and CELA qualification
preparation for all members; and resolute focus on high-quality
leads, which remain many multiples ahead of our
competition.
Johan Svanstrom, CEO,
said:
"Overall,
we continue to expect a better year for the UK property market in
2024 than in 2023.
Within
that, we see different dynamics across the many segments that we
serve, with particular strength in resales.
We are
pleased to see our existing and new partners recognising the value
that we can deliver together. We
have a growing, innovative portfolio of digital services,
exemplified by strong take-up of Optimiser Edge and an increase in
lettings branches and affordable new homes
developments.
We remain
confident in achieving a year of good financial and strategic
progress and are focused on driving further long-term platform
growth."
Enquiries:
Investor
Relations Investor.Relations@rightmove.co.uk
Powerscourt rightmove@powerscourt-group.com
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.
-
Customers
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 housing market indicators: our monthly House Price Index
(established 2002), our quarterly Rental Trends Tracker
(established 2015), and a weekly Mortgage Rates Tracker
(established 2023). 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] Published
on 22 April, for the period 10 March to 13
April 2024.
[2] Published
on 29 April, for the period 1 January to 31
March 2024.
[3] Source:
Comscore Media Metrix Desktop, Mobile Web, Mobile App, March 2024, United
Kingdom. Comscore revised Desktop data is based on
preliminary April 2024 data analysis
for the United Kingdom.