OnTheMarket plc (LON: OTMP), the agent-backed company which operates the OnTheMarket.com property portal, has announced today its audited results for the year ended 31 January 2018.
Financial highlights and KPIs
· Group revenue £16.0m1 (2017: £17.8m).
· Adjusted operating profit2 £3.9m (2017: £2.3m).
· Operating loss of £10.8m (2017: £1.2m) which includes £14.7m (2017: £3.5m) of exceptional items.
· Loss after tax attributable to shareholders £12.1m (2017: £4.0m).
· Cash of £3.2m as at 31 January 2018 (£2.3m at 31 January 2017).
· ARPA3 £235 (2017: £235), average branch numbers listed at OnTheMarket.com 5,694 (2017: 6,306), visits4 77.3m (2017: 85.0m).
Operational and strategic highlights
· In February 2017, the hearing of Agents’ Mutual and Gascoigne Halman Limited took place before the Competition Appeal Tribunal (see “Litigation” below).
· In July 2017, the Competition Appeal Tribunal ruled in favour of Agents’ Mutual against Gascoigne Halman Limited on all competition issues:
o the One Other Portal rule5 was upheld as lawful and enforceable; and
o Agents’ Mutual was awarded £1.2m as an interim payment towards litigation costs.
· New Board members were appointed in preparation for admission to AIM alongside a capital raise.
Post period end highlights
· On 9 February 2018, OTM was admitted to trading on AIM and raised £30m of capital to support the launch of a transformational growth strategy.
· The majority of Agents’ Mutual members committed to new 5-year listing agreements from Admission and to enter lock-in arrangements to retain the majority of their shares for 5 years.
· As of 25 May 2018, OTM had signed listing agreements with UK estate and letting agents with more than 8,500 offices – up by more than 54% since admission to AIM.
· Traffic to the portal in the current financial year to end May was 42.2m visits, compared with 21.9m in the same period in 2017.
· National TV advertising ran on prime time channels in May 2018.
· The Company rolled-out its first outdoor advertising campaign with over 1,500 sites in London in May 2018.
· By 31 May 2018 the field sales team had more than doubled to 32 since Admission and the IT team had grown from 21 to 40.
· Many agents are choosing to advertise their new-to-market listings at OnTheMarket.com before releasing them to other portals.
Ian Springett, Chief Executive Officer of OnTheMarket plc, commented:
“We are in the midst of a transformational year for OnTheMarket. After listing on AIM in February, we are continuing on our journey to create a genuine alternative to the leading incumbent portals. In addition to accelerating growth in the numbers of agents, property listings and portal visitors, we also remain focused on developing new consumer and agent products and services, targeting revenues from new segments of the property market and developing new strategic partnerships.
“In less than four months, we have grown the number of estate agent offices that we have listing agreements with by over 54% to more than 8,500. Our traffic to the portal in the current financial year to end May was 42.2m visits, compared to 21.9m in the same period in 2017. We are strongly encouraged by the growing agent and customer support and feedback to our proposition, and I look forward to carrying this momentum forward in our first financial year as a listed company.”
1) Revenues include an amount of £2.5m in respect of bad debts which are charged as an expense within administrative expenses (2017: £2.2m).
2) Adjusted operating profit is defined as operating profit before finance costs, taxation, share based payments and exceptional or non-recurring items. This is an alternative performance measure and should not be considered an alternative to IFRS measures, such as revenue or operating profit. Please see the Chief Executive Officer’s Report below for a reconciliation of operating loss to adjusted operating profit.
3) Average revenue per property advertiser, being revenues due from property advertisers for a period divided by the average number of property advertisers for that period. ARPA presented herein is the average of the monthly ARPAs for the year.
4) Visits comprise individual sessions on OnTheMarket.com’s web based portal or mobile applications by users for the period indicated as measured by Google Analytics.
5) The One Other Portal rule is a provision included in Agents’ Mutual’s original listing agreements whereby agents committed to list their properties on OnTheMarket.com and contractually agreed to using a maximum of one other competing portal.
