Rightmove Positive About Growth

Rightmove plc, owner of the UK’s leading property portal, rightmove.co.uk, has posted its half year results, saying that although profit and revenue fell, the portal experienced growth across almost all of the company’s key metrics and it remains optimistic for the rest of the year ahead.

A statement from the company reveals a 4% fall in operating profits to £19.9 million, while revenues fell 11% to £33.6 million, something the company attributes to the number of agents who left the industry during 2008.

On a positive note, costs were 19% lower than a year ago at £13.7 million, without any reductions in marketing spend or investment in the website.

Also encouraging is the fact that page impressions on rightmove.co.uk were up by 3% on 2008 figures to 3.2 billion. While the number of advertisers was down 13% to 16,874 year-on-year, the company says it was actually up 1% in the six month period since 31 December 2008, and average spend per advertiser was up 1% at £305 per month.

Rightmove’s Commercial Director, Miles Shipside, commented:

“Home hunters and our property advertisers have proven immensely loyal to Rightmove in what have clearly been challenging times for everyone. In return, we have kept our marketing spend high and diversified our product range in order to assist agents with a greater choice of products whilst driving a larger audience to view their properties.”

“Customer confidence in what Rightmove delivers can be seen in the fact that average spend per agent has risen in 2009, as agents look to adopt the new services we have introduced in order to help them win instructions and sell property. Agents have also looked to take advantage of the lettings market through Rightmove, with lettings membership up by 15% this year.”

Ed Williams, Group Managing Director, said:

“Rightmove has proven its worth in tough times. Customer loyalty, coupled with cost management, mean we have been able to weather these housing market conditions with minimal impact on profitability. Our business is already growing again on all major measures whether that is in terms of usage of our website by home hunters, in terms of number of advertisers or in terms of their individual spend with us.”

For a full report of the results visit Rightmove’s Investor Relations website.

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