Countrywide shares rise while Purplebricks’ are down after being named as stock to avoid

Countrywide shares went up over 8% yesterday from a starting price of 4.30p to finish at 4.65p.

No announcement had been made, but there have been rumours of a possible interested buyer.

The recent appointment of a new chief operating officer, Bruce Marsh, with direct experience of turning around a large company – Tesco – may also be cheering investors.

LSL shares also rose yesterday – up over 3% in a bounce yesterday afternoon. They finished at 225p after yesterday’s lunchtime low of 215p.

By contrast Purplebricks shares went down 2.34% from a start of 111p to 108.4p, after being named last week by Motley Fool writer G A Chester as one of three stocks to “avoid at all costs”.

Chester wrote on the investment website: “Purplebricks refuses to disclose the number of its instructions that result in a completed sale. I’ve seen an increase in dissatisfied customers on Trustpilot recently. ‘Bad’ ratings in the last 475 reviews are running at three times the historical rate. I suspect this is a further indication the business is going backwards.”

Yesterday, however, Purplebricks had an 88% ‘excellent’ rating on Trustpilot with almost nothing below five stars in the last day and in line with the 89% approval rating that EYE last reported on.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/3-stocks-d-avoid-costs-114430151.html?guccounter=1

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10 Comments

  1. Breckland Agent

    There seems to be a disparity between the number of substandard reviews “captured” and those that remain publicly visible…I wonder why or how this could be?

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    1. Bless You

      Strange. Woodford has just been sacked. Bricks is a ship with no captain…

      Share price up 3%….

      Can’t work that one out.

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      1. PeeBee

        Share price diving down again – currently 1.5% down on yesterday’s close.
         
        Expect the daily dead cat bounce from around 3.30 – let’s see if fact or fantasy wins the last throw of today’s dice…

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  2. paul836

    When will Countrywide learn…. Alison Platt had no industry experience and look at the mess she created. A new COO that has never listed a house, driven a fee etc etc. I am yet to see a non industry figure that is given a big job add value.
    I wish him well and hope indeed that every little helps!!

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  3. Hillofwad71

    Countrywide

    With a share price so low and moderate volumes, daily swings of 5-10% are the norm .The next trading update will be signifcant There are only so many times you can say that the tunaround strategy is bearing fruit when revenue is declining and debt increasing  .

    Unlikley with all the branch closures that they would have made any major inroads into reducing the debt burden of £90m  or improved revenue

    Turn the clock back a decade  -maybe rinse and repeat!

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/feb/19/distress-debt-investors

     

    Bricks

    Is  Vic there ? Maybe  he has had a hard act to follow in the form of Michael Bruce but so far all Vic has done is demonstrate that he is still learning the estate agency business .

     

    I wonder what his own personal Trustpilot rating would be ?

    Rigor mortis is setting  in as the company awaits a new future. Somone will be making a move soon perhaps after they finally shut down the overseas operations Perhaps selling Canada .

    Trading update on Nov 7th is only going to reveal the size of some huge losses Instruction levels down in the UK .How much of the £60m cash pot will they have left  How much  more bad news?

    Maybe the significant players are waiting til then

    The onliners are fast becoming a version of “Ten Green Bottles”

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  4. J1

    Coutrywide shareprice down again today………….

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  5. PeeBee

    “Yesterday, however, Purplebricks had an 88% ‘excellent’ rating on Trustpilot with almost nothing below five stars in the last day and in line with the 89% approval rating that EYE last reported on.”

    There have been twenty one 1-star Trustpilot reviews posted in the last 7 days.  Two of those have been removed

    uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/5d9f5a336b04580a8c32b8e1 – currently being “reviewed”

    uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/5d9dd4316b04580a60be4cd4 – gone without trace.  A VERIFIED review.

    Of those that remain, TWELVE have the status “Reviewer contacted”.  This means that if the reviewer does not get in touch and satisfy TP/PB that they are genuine, their reviews can be removed.  Only three have so far responded to the request.

    It has been noted that over 300 1-star reviews have been removed this year so far (credit: ‘flower’ – Twitter).  Same for 2018 – almost one review per day was #NUKED from public view – and the record books.

     

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    1. PeeBee

      Update: There have been FOUR 1-star reviews posted so far today.  Assuming Frau Renshaw wrote this article at a sensible time yesterday, as many as six may have been posted since she did her count.
       
      I would respectfully suggest our lovely resident Landlady picked a good day for PB to check the Scores on their Doors…

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  6. PeeBee

    Just spotted this RNS feed – Woodford dumps the vast majority of PB shares:

    londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/PURP/14266960.html

    Interesting (to me, at least…) that they are only quoting the stock held as “less than 5%”.  But that means that they have flogged minimum two thirds of their holding.

    Seems to have actually had a positive effect on the SP.  But there’s another hour to go… let’s see how many times the dead cat doth bounce!

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    1. PeeBee

      The cat bounced upward by almost 3% in the end… but didn’t land on all fours by any stretch of the imagination.
       
      Tomorrow could be interesting.

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