The board of OnTheMarket has announced that it expects to start trading on the stock market shortly. Rival Zoopla has welcomed the news, which means that the ‘one other portal’ rule will be dropped in two weeks’ time.
OTM has conditionally raised £30m through the placing of new ordinary shares, and expects that dealing in its shares on AIM will start on February 9.
It expects agents to own more than 70% of the issued share capital, and that the company’s market capitalisation on admission will be £100m. Its starting share price is likely to be £1.65.
The flotation was first announced last August, when OTM said it hoped to raise £50m, valuing the business at between £200m and £250m.
In a statement this morning it emphasised:
“The key proposition of the business remains the creation of an agent-backed, full-scale property portal to disrupt what is otherwise a duopoly of Rightmove and Zoopla by offering a premier search experience to consumers whilst charging sustainably fair prices to agents.
“From Admission, the Directors believe the OnTheMarket portal will have over 5,500 branches representing around a third of the total UK residential property listings.
“Agents provide the majority of income for the property portals and also supply the majority of their most valuable content – the property listings.
“As a portal with significant agent support, the Directors believe OnTheMarket.com is uniquely positioned to create an alternative to the leading incumbent portals and to provide an opportunity for a broad base of agents to participate in the equity value of their own portal.”
The statement continues to say:
“Other key elements of the strategy are:
- increasing the marketing budget to up to £25m per annum for the first two years to raise the profile of the OnTheMarket.com brand and continue to build the consumer audience;
- investing to scale up the company’s infrastructure, especially its sales and customer relationship management organisation and its technology development;
- growing substantially the core customer base of estate and lettings agents and other property advertisers using the portal; and
- accelerating agent recruitment and broadening agent backing with the targeted use of equity incentivisation for key agents committing to support the portal with long term listing agreements.”
This morning, a spokesperson for ZPG said: “We welcome this news as it finally lifts the restrictive rule placed on agents for the past three years that has prevented them from being able to market their clients’ properties freely and achieve the best outcome for them.
“We look forward to continuing to welcome back agents who want to benefit from the best value and most effective marketing, software and data solutions in the UK.”
http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/other/13510720.html
Am I being stupid? I thought that OTM were raising £50m thru the fund management company??? Not £30m”!!
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Not enough subscribers for the placing
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Statement from teai.co.uk
“In response to the news of OTM falling £20 Million Pounds short of its much hyped £50 Million Pounds target, I’m sure that if the OTM AIM/IPO Vote was run again, knowing what we know now, the outcome would be different. However we swallowed the hype offered and now witness the disappointing reality.
Existing Members wishing to leave remain unfairly handcuffed to OTM and only able to market on one other portal, yet new members can use any portal? To treat existing members in that way remains shameful and for me it demonstrates a complete lack of integrity.
Sadly, where OnTheMarket should have been gathering momentum from its inception it seems unable to find its place within our industry. For all the hardworking High Street Estate Agents, that remains bitterly disappointing.”
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Looking out of my office window, I can see pigs flying in formation.
Mind you, ‘continue to build the consumer audience’ shouldn’t be too hard from FA!
‘Consumer’ ??? Has AP joined OTM bringing her estate agency is retail ideas with her?
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As the piece, somewhat surprisingly, doesn’t mention, the story here is that OTM raised far less than intended. Another great outcome for the membership! It’s not surprising investors weren’t exactly falling over themselves given it’s still essentially a ‘me too’ offer on a budget. Where exactly is the differentiation that will set it apart from RM and Zoopla? Am I missing something here? What does a ‘premier search experience’ look like then? I’m guessing they don’t mean the opportunity to search far fewer properties at once than the other portals!?
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Preach!
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Not really. Just stating the facts as I see them – which are pretty much in line with the general sentiment here. But if you are a fanboy of the project then I guess this latest farce is a bit of a slap in the mush. £250m valuation, £50m raised? Not even close.
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It seems laughable that they are going to create a portal which wont be as good as RM or Zoopla…
Their original business model was based on protecting the traditional agent… sadly what they never considered was that most applicants, landlords and vendors dont care about that and that’s who the websites are for…
So unless they’re very clever this is just going to be a VERY expensive flop.
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And now the promises made at the road show all start to fall apart. Predicted share value was circa £4 – £5. OTM predictions are now circa £1.65.
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Anyone who voted based on £4-£5 was tripping
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“Anyone who voted based on £4-£5 was tripping”
Sadly a lot did.
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Congratulations, this means I can now get a “wiggle on” and not have any conflict with the one other portal rule.
Those who have wondered about my delay should understand the motivation of not creating a distraction to this. I am delighted it is sorted.
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OTM announce plans to raise 30mil to allow them to float on the stock market to raise more money. Always raising money, I wonder why?
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Valuing a doomed company even their own customers want to fail at £100 million.
Complete joke of a company.
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Here’s a novel idea…….what about if OTM put most of the £25m marketing budget behind ‘intelligent marketing’, extolling the virtues of Full Service estate agency and why vendors should use this route to obtain the very best sale price and level of service driven by results (not pay whether you sell or not).
If this subsequently generated lots of new business for member agents then surely they would all be very happy, they would all push OTM in their local marketing, and many current non members would be attracted to join.
OTM would gain lots more publicity and new members…..win, win, win all round.
Or will OTM just use the budget to market themselves, with a view of increasing the share price as much as possible?
If OTM want lots and lots of ideas towards Intelligent Marketing they know who to contact 😉
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I’d just like OTM to be £25 million better.
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Does anyone know how OTM with ?5,000 odd branch members gets valued on the AIM at half what PB launched at?
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Fairly obviously it’s a statement on perceived potential
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Where do I start…..?
I could write a book on this unfolding fiasco however….. why bother, each instalment writes itself.
It remains a House of Mirrors, each telling a different story…. apart from that each reflection showing a line of ducks on the wall…. and none of them ever line up…. because it’s just a fantasy which I and many others are paying real money for?
You’ve got to admire the tenacity though….. to keep effectively shafting members relentlessly. Another whimpering performance that is weaker than the weakest f*rt!
In this apparent “Fundraising for **** All” campaign world that we witness all around us….. the thundering announcement is £20 Million Pounds, £20,000,000 SHORT of the OTMV2Hype!!!
Ian & Co…. you have outperformed the “how low can you go” Performance Chart…. Congratulations, another lamentable job well done!
If you can’t get sp up from circa £1.65, having set the bar so lamentably low, then you should walk the same plank as Ms Platt.
That’s the strategy me thinks …start from lamentable and any improvement is an improvement and your investing buddies win too!
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Should Ian Springett and those 4 ‘key ‘ management shareholders make up the £20 million shortfall by foregoing their self-awarded shares?
If ‘key’ means failing miserably to achieve any of their original objectives including this IPO at a half decent price then I hope that this ‘key’ breaks in the lock.
Thus, preventing them from ever having anything to do with estate agency again as It appears to me that the principal beneficiary of this whole debacle is non-other than ZPG?
Meanwhile RM march on unabated.
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