Purplebricks has said it will consider acquisitions in Europe, and in particular has Germany in its sights. However, the firm seems to be in no hurry.
Chief executive Michael Bruce said the business is looking to replicate its recent deal in Canada, when it acquired an existing online estate agent DuProprio/Com Free.
Bruce told the Press Association that Purplebricks is not planning to launch into any new market from scratch for the time being.
He said: “We’d be more interested at this stage in an acquisition than putting some troops on the ground.”
However, Purplebricks said it is in no rush to expand its overseas footprint.
Bruce said: “We’re not directly touting but it’s clear that people know us and the brand, and what we’re trying to achieve.
“We know who’s doing okay in these markets and we’re observing them.”
German media giant Axel Springer pumped £125m into Purplebricks earlier this year and currently has an 11.5% stake in the business.
Bruce also told the Press Association of his ambition to grow market share in the UK to 10%, and of plans to launch something called Purplebricks Plus, an online platform allowing users to see all their domestic suppliers on one dashboard.
Yesterday, its shares closed down around 3% at about 287p.
Comments (20)
yep, share price lower.
no new purple PbRICKS for sale boards anywhere near me.
Summer holidays always makes it a little quieter and general market showing 29% less stock (did I read this or imagine it?)
Any hoo
the PB poo is squarely flung towards the rotating blades used to move air about a bit.
Full credit to the Bruce brothers for making the most of their lot, failed ‘property refurbishment’ business prior to PB, took a load of investor money, did well off share price only not actual profits, took it overseas to show ‘potential’ and to get away from slowing revenues and increased marketing spend in the UK, got away with saying business suffered due to ‘training days’ for staff where most businesses see training as a necessary not a unique aspect of business that should affect profit, and now taking more investor money to essentially buy existing businesses that they don’t seemingly want to rebrand into PB.
So basically made their riches off investor money without ever showing a return other than share price (and only for those who exited at the right time) – the next chapter is now brokering purchases of other internet only advertisers – need some investor money for that….
An interesting section from the full Press Association piece…
‘The rift with Jefferies was clearly a headache when it blew up, with Purplebricks blaming a note from the group – authored by Anthony Codling and Sam Cullen – for causing its shares to tumble.
Mr Bruce still refutes their report questioning Purplebricks data on how many houses it sells within 10 months, and claimed Jefferies was biased, given that it counts some estate agent rivals as its clients.
“They can’t really go around saying we’re the most wonderful stock in the world, when we’re competing against their own clients,” he said.’
Michael Bruce may refute the Jefferies research but he still offers no clarification of their listing to completion ratio ie: how many pay up front but don’t sell with Purplebricks?
Simple enough figure to calculate but clearly they don’t like the answer to that calculation!
Simple enough figure to calculate but clearly they don’t like the answer to that calculation!
Malcolm you seem to cast aspersions frequently, you don’t know this for fact and really you should know better than these continued attacks.
Easy way for the questions to stop Dom – Purplebricks can reveal the answer rather than shying away from it.
…and before you say that their competitors don’t give their listing to completion figures, they don’t have to as their vendors don’t pay up front!
>and before you say that their competitors don’t give their listing to completion figures, they don’t have to as their vendors don’t pay up front!
I’m sure those paying high commission charges on the full asset price would like to know how much of it gets spent by Estate Agents on properties that don’t sell. Likewise, they’d probably like to know how much profit they are giving to the Estate Agents whilst those who don’t sell pay nothing towards profits.
So completion figures would I think be pretty interesting and it’s not surprising that they’ve been kept quiet all these years given that I’ve heard the average is around 50%.
All traditional agents need to do is start publishing their conversion rates and the online companies would have no excuse. Not going to happen though is it?
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In my opinion that’s a pretty thin argument CD.
Plenty of anecdotal evidence on my patch that average fees are 1% (inc vat) so hardly a ‘high commission charge’.
If PB are so convinced in their success rate why don’t they go NSNF at £849 rather than ‘pay anyway’?
I would rather know that I was paying for a result and if I don’t get one then I can walk away on NSNF terms than take a risk on paying up front and not selling.
That’s why PB need to publish their success ratio.
Why won’t they? Because as Jefferies stated, 48.4% who listed didn’t sell. Remember that’s 48.4% of people who stumped up a minimum of £849, took a punt and haven’t sold.
It’s all well and good for Michael Bruce to ‘refute’ the claims but if he really vehemently disagreed with the claims you would assume that Jefferies would have had some form of legal letter by now and that the report would have been deleted from searches on Google.
The fact it still exists is quite telling. PB can’t be confident of challenging the data otherwise they would have done by now.
>In my opinion that’s a pretty thin argument CD.
I disagree. I was gobsmacked when i saw the claim that the average conversion rate for traditional agents was 50%. If true, how can Agents behave like they do when they come to value your home? There’s never any mention of this conversion rate. I would be very surprised if people think it’s anywhere near as low as this when they list their properties with an agent.
>I would rather know that I was paying for a result and if I don’t get one then I can walk away on NSNF terms than take a risk on paying up front and not selling.
People are different. There’s no way paying a percentage of the asset price is a fair way to charge. Can you explain that? Why does somebody with a £500K property pay twice as much as somebody with a £250K one?
>The fact it still exists is quite telling. PB can’t be confident of challenging the data otherwise they would have done by now.
PB did challenge the report. If they challenged it legally then they’re in the same situation – they don’t see why they should release data that their competitors don’t. By the same argument you could say Jefferies failing to contradict PB’s challenge is quite telling. Like the time they said the conversion rate was 14%. They didn’t respond then either. It’s all just spin and counter-spin. I said this would be the case when it became known that Jefferies would be releasing data. At the time it sounded like we were going to have figures for all the big agents but it turned out to be just PB. I wonder why that was?
Ignoring the actual numbers how is Bruce’s 88% calculated?
Don’t know.
Ducky, are you saying that putting a bet on the horses without knowing the odds is the same as knowing the odds without putting a bet on?
Dom is the clever one now as he uses big words.
Perhaps asking a more basic question could reasonably demand an answer.
What is being divided by what to come up with the answer 0.88?
To clarify this argument is down to one thing – Transparency.
Purplebricks talk endlessly about them being transparent, not hiding anything etc, but when it comes down to it, there is no transparency.
They bang on about it as some sort of USP, they should be the ones to start the ball rolling. They don’t want to do this and that tells a story all on its own.
>Purplebricks talk endlessly about them being transparent, not hiding anything etc,
Are you sure they say “not hiding anything”. They’d be the only PLC I’d ever come across if that was the case. It’s a foolish company that discloses all their sensitive information.
From their website “As is our commitment to delivering a much more convenient, transparent and cost effective service for sellers, buyers, landlords and tenants.”
In this case they’re talking about the service they offer, nothing else.
I’d be interested to see where they say that everything is transparent.
“As is our commitment to delivering a much more convenient, transparent and cost effective service for sellers, buyers, landlords and tenants.”
1. It’s not more convenient unless you prefer no human contact, or at least human contact with somebody who knows what they’re doing
2. It’s only transparent when you know that on top of the headline fee the viewings add on and solicitor uplift take you to approx 2/3rds of the average fee for much of the country
3. There is no service, none that is worth paying anything for, it’s not even the staff’s fault the lpe gets paid on instruction so it’s on to the next one to put food on the table and the call centre staff can’t be expected to be effective in the nuances of sales in towns they’ve probably never visited
4. A much more labour intensive business like lettings, well, there’s a special kind of hell here using PB and unlike sales there’s not a cluster of other vested professionals gritting teeth to sort it out
No question their market share is falling in my areas (Surrey) despite the huge TV/Radio spend.
Carries on like this and I imagine the LPE’s will start to walk…
Hopefully, the ubiquitous Housesimple “Derek” adverts are having an impact on the general public.
“Aren’t they one of those online estate agents who take your money even if your house doesn’t sell?”
Must be time for PB to introduce a NSNF option.
According to Zoopla and OTM, it appears Purplebricks market share is roughly 2%, so PB has a hell of a long way to go.
It makes sense for them to cast a slide rule over Germany…and France for that matter. The following link shows all of the portals that Axel Springer owns…they will want to drive more traffic to their portals and even better if they can earn additional money along the way. This is why there is the investment. https://www.axelspringer.com/en/brands
Look at other portals they own in other spaces. I loosely draw a parallel with their ownership of Stepstone, a German recruitment site, they own the UK equivalents TotalJobs and Jobsite. Let your minds drift and you will see how the minds are working in a boardroom in downtown Bavaria! Wonder what the word for call centre in German is….