Zoopla this morning announced record revenues and profits, after LSL, parent company of brands including Your Move, Reeds Rains and Marsh & Parsons, yesterday reported a fall in revenues for the four months to the end of October and expressed concern about the market.
Zoopla today delivered its full-year results for the 12 months to the end of September, with record revenue at £197m – an 84% rise. Adjusted EBITDA (profits after costs) was £77.1m
It said that continued UK ‘agency partner’ growth was up 5%, and listings inventory up 10%. The total number of “unique property partners” stood at 23,101 at the end of September, including those subscribing to the Property Software Group, which Zoopla acquired during the year. Zoopla said there had been 18 consecutive months of ‘agency partner’ growth.
The actual number of branches advertising on the portals stood at 13,373 by the end of the year, in addition to 2,610 new homes developments and 1,074 overseas agents nd 415 commercial agents. There were 5,003 software-only agents.
The company said that over 600 branches had returned to it over the past 18 months.
Zoopla said it had generated over 23m leads during the year, including 350,000 property appraisal leads.
The company also this morning announced the acquisition of Technicweb, a website design and hosting business.
Zoopla said it was “comfortable” with expectations for next year.
However, City analyst William Packer of Exane BNP Paribas was critical of the results and said membership of the portals was still 20% below the launch of OnTheMarket and significantly lagging Rightmove.
He said that “weakness at the property portal business (we estimate organic negative growth) [was] offset by a strong performance at Comparison Services. EPS is 2% ahead of consensus expectations. The company continue to grow estate agency membership with 18 months of ‘consecutive growth’ (although levels still well below pre-Agents’ Mutual launch)”.
He described progress at the property portal as limited, with 2% growth in advertising revenue per agent, and tepid traffic growth, up 2%.
Meanwhile, LSL expressed caution for next year and said the fall in revenue in the fourth months to the end of October reflected lower activity levels in the residential sales market.
This was despite lettings and financial services revenue both being up, by 7% and 24% respectively.
Group revenues fell 3.4% from £110.4m in the same period last year to £106.6m.
The firm said it expects underlying group profit for this year to be in line with expectations, but added: “With the reduction in market activity levels in the second half of 2016 and uncertainty over UK economic conditions, we are cautious on the market outlook for 2017.
“However, mortgage costs and availability remain positive and the medium- to longer-term fundamentals of the UK housing market remain positive.
“LSL has very strong fundamentals. . . The business is well positioned to adapt quickly to changing market conditions to deliver long-term value to shareholders.”
Yesterday’s trading update to the City also made reference to LSL’s entire sale of Zoopla shares, raising £36.1m. It said the proceeds are being used to reduce corporate indebtedness.
I am interested to see if anyone out there would be concerned about effectively giving all of its valuable locally attained data to a huge company…by using the same group’s estate agency software? Comments welcome.
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I get your point AgentV, but (as I have said in previous posts) its only really a valid point if the data you have is unique to you and only you. i.e. All of your Vendors, Landlords and applicants would have to be living like hermits, off grid, off line and not talking to any other agent, or browsing any other portal or website on every corner of the web.
Lets say you don’t through choice use a particular product, software or portal. Can you stop your Vendors, Landlords and applicants, who are all actively looking to move, from keying their data directly into a website, product or portal you abstain from? I think not. If your customers are “protected” by you on a one man crusade from certain products, websites and portals how do you expect to protect “your valuable locally attained data” from being offered to the agent next door by the very people who you believe you own the sole data rights to? Do you not think they are already in other agents systems who use the products you abstain from? Its not just you they are talking to and sharing their intimate moving details with and its not just portals, websites and agents they share it with.
I do not condone the collection of data or soliciting of data by data harvest, but the legals deal with that side of things. And even if the portals do as you suggest the consumers seem ok with pumping their details, requirements and inner most thoughts into multiple data collection sites regardless; even outside of the property industry. Insurance, broadband, travel. They all know where you are currently living, when you are away and the moment you move or apply for a mortgage to move. This is a losing battle unless you take all of your customers hostage in a room and don’t give them your wifi code.
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PeeWee,
Yes agreed….but some agents are worried about too much information and knowledge being fed into one place where it can possibly be utilised at a future date to undermine the necessity of having a local agent…..or used to create new rivals for self gain. Maybe its a bit sci-fi ish, but I just wondered how wide a concern it was?
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So in a nutshell – ARLA is just making some noise. But really does not carry any weight what so ever. Absolute farce.
Why does’nt ARLA show some dedication to the letting agents and ban the yearly fees etc.
We have propped them for years. For what ? Nothing !!!!!!!!!
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They have no usage of your data as a software company, any more than Microsoft or Apple do of your personal ‘data’. Its not different to using cloud based storage in that they also do not have usage of the data.
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Ahhh bless!
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So what you are saying is that if you registered 5,000 email addresses of local people on the software owned by them and they provided an emailing out system for you, they would have no access to that data or interest in it, even if it could provide multiple opportunities for them to cross sell? If they then said you could have a large proportion of the cross sell opportunity commissions, would you give them access then?…subject to client approval of course. Whats in your terms and conditions when you sign up to use the software?
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Need I say again, I don’t condone data harvesting, nor do I suspect everyone or anyone does it, but the reality is, even if they do, so what? If they don’t get it from you they get it from someone else, who gets it from someone else who gets it from someone else. Everyone has opportunities to cross sell its happening everywhere all around us in every industry.
Sounds like someone needs to tool up and offer the client services their clients expect and that they require in order to move home and who will go looking for these services elsewhere if you don’t offer a better alternative? Like pushing water uphill you should write a strongly worded open letter of complaint and post it on here.
Many many months if not years ago I said the agents have an opportunity to make OTM work for them and if they didn’t then, well, here we are. Its obvious over half of agents don’t care and have analysis paralysis or are quite happy to make what works for them work and leave the rest for others to pick off.
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I still think OTM can turn the corner and resurect a resurgence of interest if they start listening and acting with imagination and new ideas.
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We have had a ‘follow’ on Twitter from a firm called No Agent.
If memory serves weren’t they booted by Rightmove but not Zoopla. I can’t find them with a quick check on Rightmove, but I can on Zoopla.
So remember when you are handing your money over every month that Zoopla supports No Agents.
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For those of you freaking out about data sharing, here’s an idea:
1. Visit gmail.com
2. Sign up with a random email address; something along the lines of frwac27915@gmail.com
3. Enter this ‘person’ in to your Zoopla connected CRM with the email address in Step 2.
4. Check the inbox weekly thereafter to see if/when ZPG related emails start appearing
If they do, then your question is answered… if they don’t, then your question remains open.
And for those that don’t follow this; I guess I have to spell it out – don’t use this email address anywhere else.
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