26th Feb 2016 09:49
LONDON (Alliance News) - Online property portal Rightmove PLC appears to be unaffected by property portal OnTheMarket's bid to take a larger market share, and said Friday its pretax profit was lifted in 2015 by higher revenue, driven by a strong audience growth and an increase in its average revenue per advertiser.
The FTSE 250-listed company said its pretax profit was up 16% to GBP144.3 million in the year to the end of December, from GBP124.6 million in 2014, boosted by the 15% increase in revenue to GBP192.1 million from GBP167.0 million.
Rightmove said traffic to its website grew 14% in the year to 17.50 billion page views, up from 15.40 billion the previous year, while its average revenue per advertiser increased by 10% to GBP754 per month. It said the number of agency and new homes advertisers increased 2.0% to 19.752 from 19,304.
Rightmove said it had 77% market share of the top four UK property portals by time spent in 2015, up from 74% in 2014, putting the increased traffic down to the size of its residential property database. Rightmove has 50% more UK residential properties on its website than any other portal, with a total of 1.2 million properties listed, up from 1.1 million the previous year.
The group added it generated 16% more leads in the year at almost 50 million, and this strong momentum looks to be continuing on into 2016, having already generated more than 9 million leads in 2016 to date.
This comes despite an effort by OnTheMarket to expand its presence in the market, having set a rule that to be listed on its portal, an agent must drop either Rightmove or Zoopla Propety Group PLC. Rightmove said the risk was unchanged in terms of this increased competition, and has taken steps to mitigate any impact, through marketing and investment.
The company hiked its final dividend to 27.00 pence per share from 22.00p, 23% higher, bringing its total dividend to 43p per share from 35p in 2014.
"Our property stock advantage coupled with our brand strength and innovation have substantially increased our audience size and engagement this year. We attracted 200 million more visits in 2015 as more people came to search and research the only place with a million properties for sale and to rent in the UK," said Chief Executive Nick McKittrick.
Rightmove shares were down 6.0% at 3,678.00p on Friday morning.
By Hannah Boland; [email protected]; @Hannaheboland
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