OnTheMarket (OTM) has written to the estate agents that backed the portal at its 2018 initial public offering to provide what the portal deems to be a better outcome if they wish to sell their shares once the fixed period ends in February 2023.When committing to the IPO, agent shareholders were restricted from selling their shares for five years, but that committed period is due to end of 9 February 2023.

OTM chief executive Jason Tebb has written to agents urging them to either remain as shareholders or use a proposed share dealing facility it has created, rather than selling their stake on the open market, as they may get not achieve the best price possible.

OTM provided shareholders with this statement yesterday:

Proposed Agent Share Dealing Arrangements

OnTheMarket plc, the majority agent-owned company which operates the onthemarket.com property portal, announces that yesterday it posted to eligible agent shareholders a letter (and certain other documents) (the “Agent Shareholder Letter”) setting out details of a proposed streamlined mechanism for eligible agent shareholders who entered into five-year lock-in arrangements in respect of their ordinary shares in the capital of the Company (“Ordinary Shares”) (“Entitled Agent Shareholders”) at the time of the Company’s admission to AIM in February 2018 (the “Lock-in Arrangements”) to trade their Ordinary Shares, should they so wish, when those Lock-in Arrangements expire in February 2023.

The proposed arrangements referred to above involve making a Corporate Sponsored Nominee administered by Link Group (“Link”) (the “OTM CSN”) available, which provides a facility for Entitled Agent Shareholders who wish to do so to dematerialise their Ordinary Shares and transfer them electronically into the OTM CSN to facilitate future share trading. In due course, it is intended to provide for Entitled Agent Shareholders and participants in the Company’s management incentive plan who are also subject to the Lock-in Arrangements, via the Company’s brokers, Zeus Capital and Shore Capital, to participate in a process to sell Ordinary Shares in an aggregated and orderly manner, to match share buying and selling demand, which the directors of the Company expect to provide a better outcome for those persons who wish to sell Ordinary Shares and for other stakeholders in the Company. Further information and updates on these arrangements will be provided by the Company, as appropriate, in due course.

The Directors believe that the Company’s position as the agents’ portal, with significant agent ownership, continues to offer strong strategic benefits for agents and is delighted to have agents’ ongoing support as shareholders to ensure that they continue to have a collective voice in the continuing evolution of property search websites. Through agent town halls, OnTheMarket will continue to provide a platform for agent shareholders to influence the future direction of the portal. The Company is committed to continuing to offer products and services that provide valuable leads, additional revenue opportunities and genuine cost savings to agents and the commitment to sustainably fair pricing for listing properties at onthemarket.com remains at the core of OnTheMarket’s proposition. The Directors believe that this, together with the Company’s future business strategy, will allow the business to grow shareholder value in the future. The Agent Shareholder Letter will shortly be available on the Company’s investor website under the section “Shareholder meetings and circulars” at plc.onthemarket.com/investors-shareholders, subject to certain access restrictions.