Two senior figures at Purplebricks have been awarded ‘golden handcuff’ deals totalling almost one million shares.
The hybrid agency has granted the shares to CEO Vic Darvey and CFO Any Botha under the Purplebricks Performance Share Plan.
Darvey has been given 735,437 ‘option’ shares, while Botha has been awarded 307,500.
Both awards have an exercise price of one penny per share and become exercisable subject to continued employment and performance based on the company’s relative total shareholder return and EBITDA over a three-year performance period.
Despite high expectations after its 2015 float, the Purplebricks shares still trade 12% below their listing price.
The latest figures show that Purplebricks’ market share of properties sold by volume dropped from 5.1% to 4.6%.
Darvey’s response to a tougher outlook is a revamp of Purplebricks’ pricing strategy after a successful trial in the North West of England.
Comments (10)
How do all the hardworking LPEs feel about the (potential) shares being doled out to upper management?
I’ve long since gone because it was a soul destroying company. Nothing’s changed.
PB the company that just keeps on giving
“…totalling almost one million shares… Darvey has been given 735,437 ‘option’ shares, while Botha has been awarded 307,500.”
Admittedly it’s been a while since I failed my maths ‘O’-Level – but I’m pretty sure those two figures add up to more than “almost one million“…
Ahhh the good old Purplebricks shares. I remember when they gave us all shares instead of a Christmas bonus one year. £3.79 per share. A week later they were worth £1.00. What a Christmas bonus that was.
Maybe Vic got the shares from all the staff he made redundant the last 18 months cos this bonus isn’t for his performance.
This post would be removed if I said how I felt about Vic Darvey and his abilities to lead a company.
The figures (and share price) speak for themselves.
Their failing in this year’s market, when they should have been making hay, also speaks volumes.
Should imagine the bar is set pretty low on shareholder returns for these 2 to be able to exercise their options. EBITDA is heading in the wrong direction and their inventory has shrunk to 7,452 ,(acc.to ZPL) their lowest for many years
There is no getting away from it since Vic’s arrival the whole ship has been listing
Investors have also not been lucky either .This calendar year the share price has shrunk by over 34% and 18% in the last month
Factor in no dividends either it’s fair to say they are not a happy lot. hey must be eyeing up that £70m in the bank and thinking can we have some of that please by way of dividends we can do a better job than the company who is leaving it lying idle in the bank .
Savage of Zeus ,Bricks advisers has recently appeared in interviews banging the purple drum with a load of old flannel .This is his “living room formula” on how they will be increasing instructions !! “and”,” but say ” “.if”
”
So, for illustrative purposes, I would say that if you had 100 potential vendors around, about 87 out of the 100 will know PURP, about a third, let’s say 33 would consider using the company, about two thirds of these would actually invite PURP to pitch in their living room. So, say 22 out of 100, just 1-in-5 would actually instruct the company and then successfully sell the properties so that is about 4.6% share of sold properties. In this illustration, the 18% increase in conversion in the living room would result in an increase from 1-in-5 to 1-in-4, the company leading to an instruction.”
2014- 2017 was a learning curve for the industry and the public. PB was the new kid on the block doing disruption in a way that hadn’t been done before. I looked at the model worked out the for and against and made a call it would never achieve 10% of all transactions as it had promised investors.
Purplebricks is most likely to settle into a niche now; the listers won’t earn £100k as they were promised, the investors won’t be buying fancy stuff off the back of the dividend- running it will be a job not a joy ride.
FSBO has always had place in the industry PB will be the dominant force in that niche and will be fighting off EXP and Strike for instructions rather than going toe to toe with agents as they did.
Agents have learned how to sell against them in the sitting room, the public now know the downsides of list it and leave it, portal listings
I don’t honestly know how you manage to run your business given the amount of time you spend dissing others
last time I made a comment that disagreed with yours I think you called me a child and yet you are the “child” that blocks people that don’t agree with you on Twitter. Riddle me that!
There is a lot to dislike about PB but this industry is changing and the time of the middle aged white middle class man running his business from a high street office is changing. Too cost heavy and in a sector where you don’t need any qualifications to get started.
I am guessing you run a great business but imagine how much better it could be if you focussed on the positive side of this industry rather than slagging off every newcomer. You might actually learn something!
I can only think you are replying to Hillofwad. I haven’t blocked anyone on twitter and cannot remember ever calling anyone a child.
You’ve raised an interesting point about High Street agency. The industry is changing, the portals are slowly piecing together an army of worker bees to collect listings for them in place of traditional agents. The costs of agency are not that heavy when compared with the cost of replacing the permanent brand presence in an area.
Herein lies the rub .
“This industry is changing” It is .
As Robert points out Bricks however are no longer the newcomer. Arrived to disrupt but have , added no further strings to the bow and it looks as if they have already peaked out in 2019 .
They are already old hat