Rightmove has announced that it will issue its half year results for the six months ended 30 June 2024 at 7am on Friday 26 July 2024.

A presentation for analysts will be available online from 7am at https://plc.rightmove.co.uk/investors/results-reports-presentations/year/2024

A presentation and Q&A for analysts will take place at 9.30am via a webcast, which can be accessed at: https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/nk8x46xy

Rightmove’s most recent trading update, issued in early May, revealed a strong start to 2024; reiterating full year revenue and margin guidance.

In advance of its Annual General Meeting, Rightmove provided an update on trading for the period from 1 January 2024, with figures relating to the four-month period ending 30 April 2024.

The property portal’s expectations for revenue and profit for the full year remained unchanged.

Rightmove said that it remains the place to which consumers turn first – they continue to choose Rightmove for over 80% of all consumer time spent on UK property portals.  It added that its consumers are also highly engaged – over 8 million users are opted into their marketing, with over 19 million leads delivered to agent partners, while the portal says it delivered over 40% of email leads through our app in the period.

Within estate agency, net membership increased by c.250 since the 2023 year-end, due to strong agent retention and particular strength in the lettings market (c.170 net growth in lettings-only branch count and rental operators).

Rightmove added that its digital end-to-end solution, Lead to Keys, attracted over 70 new partners to Rightmove and over 170 existing partners added the product to their subscription. Independent agent subscriptions to Optimiser Edge now exceed 700, ahead of its expectations when setting the plan for 2024. The portal’s current expectation is that agent branches will increase by up to 2% during 2024 relative to 2023, ahead of expectations earlier in the year.

The increase in membership numbers is positive for revenue and profit and provides increased consumer choice on the Rightmove site. Lettings-only agents typically have a lower ARPA, particularly those with relatively low stock.

New homes saw over 90 new developments added to Rightmove’s new, entry-level Access package, which is tailored specifically to housing associations. As with lettings-only agency branches, the additional developments are positive for revenue, profit and consumer choice; housing association ARPA is lower than for mainstream new homes developments. Based on the overall market context for developers, Rightmove expect the total number of developments for 2024 to remain relatively flat on 2023.

ARPA growth, excluding the recent change in customer mix, would be in line with its previous guidance of +£100-110.  There has been no change to Rightmove’s longstanding approach to contract renewals and pricing, and our usual discussions in the period have proceeded as expected.

Guidance update

As a result of the combined impact of the above, Rightmove now expect a different mix of ARPA and customer numbers from that anticipated at the start of the year.  It therefore update guidance for 2024 as follows:

+ Full year revenue guidance unchanged, at +7-9% on 2023

+ Full year underlying operating margin guidance unchanged, at 70%

+ Customer numbers expected to grow by up to +2% on 2023, versus previous guidance of a slight decrease

+ ARPA growth updated to +£75-£85 on 2023’s £1,431, reflecting the change in customer mix, as outlined above