Rghtmove has published its half-year results to 30th June 2024.

It’s headline reads: A strong financial performance during a period of investment, driven by continued demand from agents and new homes developers for our products and services

The financial highlights show:

· Revenue up £12.6m/7% to £192.1m, as both agents and new homes developers renewed contracts, upgraded their packages and invested in additional products

· Operating profit of £131.6m, up 2% (2023: £129.5m)

· Underlying operating profit(1) of £135.1m, up 1% (2023: £133.2m)

· Basic earnings per share up 2% to 12.4p (2023: 12.1p); underlying basic earnings per share(2) up 2% to 12.8p (2023: 12.5p)

· Operating profit and underlying operating profit include one-off acquisition costs of £0.6m, relating to HomeViews and the strategic long-term investment in Coadjute, as well as a one-off charge of £3.0m in relation to the investment in Coadjute: adjusting to remove the impact of these costs would mean that operating profit would be £135.2m, up 4%; underlying operating profit would be £138.7m, up 4%; and underlying EPS would be 13.2p, up 6%

· Interim dividend up 3% to 3.7p per ordinary share (2023: 3.6p)

· £100.2m of returns to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends in the first half of 2024 (2023: £97.6m); 10.1 million shares (1.2% of outstanding share capital) cancelled to 30 June (2023: 10.0 million)

· Cash and cash equivalents, including money market deposits, of £28.1m (31 December 2023: £38.8m)

Half Year Statement

Throughout the first half of 2024 partner demand for our products and services was strong and we have continued to invest and to innovate to expand our business, in order to deliver meaningful acceleration in both revenues and profits over the coming years.

The recovery in the housing market so far this year has been tentative: mortgage rates have eased a little but remain high, and housing transactions remain muted and slow to close – taking an average of seven months from first listing to completion. Nonetheless, our partners remained focused on competing for new vendor mandates and delivering value for their customers (our consumers) and continued to rely on our products to help them to do that.

Estate agents’ investment in our packages and products increased Agency revenues by 7% and Agency ARPA by 6%, to £1,417 (June 23: £1,341). Over 36% of our agent partners are now on our top package, Optimiser (Dec 2023: 35%). Vendor lead products, such as Local Valuation Alert, increased by 8% and we saw record growth in the number of new Lettings partners (a net c.350 increase on June 2023).

The acquisition of HomeViews – which provides the UK’s largest community of verified residential reviews of property developments – was a valuable addition to our already strong listings proposition for Rental Operators.

New homes developers continued to face a challenging market, with competition from the resale market in the face of a tentative pickup in demand. We welcome the new government’s proposals to reform the planning system and to ‘get Britain building’. However, while developers are being generally cautious in their approach to building so far this year, their usage of our digital products remained strong and New Homes ARPA increased by 9% to £1,940 as a result (June 23: £1,776). Revenue growth was more muted (4%) as development numbers reduced to 2,868 (Dec 2023: 2,946) reflecting the slower pace of building. The number of developments on our top tier package, Advanced, increased to 56% (Dec 2023: 53%).

Our Strategic Growth Areas continued to make progress, with Mortgages delivering stellar growth in Mortgages in Principle volumes and revenue up 176%/£1.4m to £2.2m. Commercial revenues grew by 12%/£0.7m to £6.5m, reflecting both increased membership numbers and contract renewals. Within Rental Services, our Lead to Keys proposition continues to gain traction with lettings agents and we enhanced further the quality and efficiency of the product during the half. Rental Services revenues grew by 29%/£0.6m to £2.5m.

Overall, total revenues increased by 7% on the same period in 2023 to £192.1m and Group ARPA grew by 6% to £1,497 (June 2023: £1,411).

Innovation in new products, not only for partners but for consumers, continued apace and we will launch our latest consumer enhancement – Renovation Calculator – in the third quarter, which will allow consumers to evaluate the uplift in the value of their property from specific renovations.

Growth in the first half was underpinned by our ongoing investment in both the Rightmove platform and people. Over 100 people have been recruited so far in 2024, and our developers are now AI-enabled, with Github Copilot. Rightmove was listed as a Sunday Times Best Place to Work for the first time and over 80% of employees think Rightmove is a great place to work.

Rightmove remains the only place to find virtually the whole of the UK property market in one place. It is the place home hunters turn to first, and engage with most, to help them with their searches. Our platform is central to making any move easier through driving the digitisation of the property market and we also provide insights into the market from our vast and unique property market data. As the market leader our market share of consumer time is over 80%.

Our strategy is to generate growth for all our stakeholders. We enjoy working with all our partners to build success together and to advocate for the industry, which in turn generates growth for Rightmove and our shareholders.

Johan Svanstrom, Chief Executive Officer, said:

“We’re pleased to deliver a strong set of H1 results, and to be progressing in executing our plan to build an even more valuable digital platform for the UK property industry.

“Our performance came against the backdrop of the sustained challenging mortgage rate environment. The period saw a pick-up in existing-homes listings and transactions, a continued yet softening imbalance of demand and supply for rentals, and a tentative outlook for new homes development volumes. With the election now concluded, the property market looks forward to potential interest rate reductions which will further stimulate activity.

“On the back of our leading position in the market, we have exciting momentum expanding our products and innovation for consumers and partners and remain confident in Rightmove’s long-term prospects.”