Turbo-charged Rightmove shares reach record high as they go towards the £7 mark

Rightmove shares reached an all-time record high yesterday as they headed towards the £7 mark.

They hit a high of 697.8p yesterday at about 2.30pm.

They ended the day at 688p.

The rise comes after Rightmove released news of record-breaking traffic in January, with 152m visits.

Rightmove has also updated the market as to its issued share capital – 890,477,712 shares, of which 13,360,310 are held by Rightmove in treasury.

Treasury shares are those which have been bought back by the company, reducing the number of shares outstanding on the open market. Treasury shares have no voting rights and receive no dividends. Rightmove regularly buys back its own shares.

Meanwhile a writer on investment website The Motley Fool has described Rightmove’s growth as “staggering” since its inception in 2007.

Rupert Hargreaves notes that over the last six years alone, Rightmove’s earnings per share have risen at a compound annual rate of nearly 20%.

Over the past decade, shares in Rightmove have returned around 31% per annum, turning every £1,000 invested into £14,000.

Hargreaves says that Zoopla, Rightmove’s nearest challenger, attracts around 50m visitors per month to its websites – fewer than half the number that visit Rightmove.

Hargreaves also says that “the one weak point in Rightmove’s business model is that it doesn’t sell properties. It relies on agents to pay a fee to list on its platform. If these agents stop paying the company for its services, earnings will slump.

“However, agents are unlikely to turn their backs on the company while it remains the UK’s top property website. And, as mentioned, with the closest competitor not even halfway to overtaking Rightmove, it doesn’t look as if this will happen any time soon.”

Hargreaves is predicting “healthy returns for investors for many years to come”.

He also talks about Rightmove’s buying back of its own shares – over the last six years, it has repurchased about 10% – saying that these buy-backs have helped “turbo-charge” earnings growth.

£2k to invest? I’d buy this FTSE 100 stock that’s turned £1k into £14k

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13 Comments

  1. GeorgeOrwell

    Congratulations Rightmove – 10/10 for share performance

    contrasting with

    1/10 for serving your paying customers – Estate Agents and Letting Agents.

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    1. Bless You

      We have more agents in area using onthemarket then rightmove …

      Why aren’t we as an industry agreeing :

      1) leave rightmove for 3 months.

      2) redirect £500 to o.m. marketing tv budget . ( using a good advert )

      3) living happily ever after.

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      1. Bless You

        £500 for 3 months.
        Then back a capped £300 per month charge.
        With a 100% share buy back to stop greed. 

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      2. AgencyInsider

        Because as an industry we can never seem to agree on anything?

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  2. Hillofwad71

    Ironic that OTM  issued a RNS today  boasting about increased traffic to the website

     

     
    Record traffic and leads for OnTheMarket in January
    OnTheMarket plc, the agent-backed company which operates the OnTheMarket.com property portal, announces today that traffic to its portal in January 2020 exceeded 30 million visits1, a new monthly record, an increase of more than 28% compared with January 2019 and 11% more than the previous record of 27.2 million in September 2019.
    This performance helped to deliver a record number of leads for OnTheMarket’s estate agent, letting agent and new homes delivery customers
     

    However that doesn’t seem to be buttering any parsnips  where cash is rapidly disappearing . They need to hook one of the big fish

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    1. mmmm

      I suspect the real big fish would rather see them disappear!

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    2. Homestead38

      Will be more interested to see an update on traffic, leads and agent numbers in February once OTM have lost those members that did not sign up to the new agreement.

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      1. Hillofwad71

        Yes that will be interesting  to see if the numbers drop .  I am still banking on the fact that OTMP are awaiting the success or otherwise of that   before making CWD and Bricks an offer they cant  refuse .

         

        The potential uplift in share price might be tempting -he says hopefully !

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  3. GeorgeOrwell

    It’s a interesting thought – “portal traffic” statistics

    Who regulates the accuracy/honesty of the traffic numbers reported. Is there an industry standard for breakdown/presentation of the numbers

    Or, is it just a generalisation of every single “visit” to maximise the numbers in favour of whichever company is spinning their statistical agenda

    I think we know the answer, although the public don’t

    Finally, measuring the “quality” of traffic? The holy grail which Rightmove & others have no interest in drilling down as that undermines their virtual product.

    Take RM as a shop that has a million timewasters a day that walk through the door, it sells nothing yet it charges a fortune for those suppliers displaying their merchandise in the RM shop

    It’s a sobering thought. Huff, bluff, house of cards stuff, propping up the RM virtual shop which sells nothing but charges eyewatering amounts

    The lyrics from Supertramp‘s “Crime of the Century” sum up it up nicely, look them up online

     

     

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  4. Property Pundit

    The link between level of traffic and share price is absolutely absurd but it just shows how little the City understand estate agency and its relationship with RM. 152 million ‘visits’ coincides with c. 100,000 completed transactions, not a great conversion rate.

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  5. PeeBee

    Above, Hillofwad71 points out
     
    “Ironic that OTM  issued a RNS today  boasting about increased traffic to the website”
     
    Earlier today, Rightmove re-Tweeted a post from “Kimberley” – who provides perfect explanation of the mechanics behind that increase when she posted
     
    “I was looking on @rightmove for potential houses I would like to buy if I won the Euro millions last night…..found some lovely ones…. I won £3….. “

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  6. SLF

    Why the hell do agents keep feeding this cash cow? Just leave for gods sake. It’s incredible, it’s like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer, realising how painful it is, having a moan and then doing it again!

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    1. Property Pundit

      Agreed, except each time they’re using a bigger and bigger hammer.

      Report
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