The Board of OnTheMarket plc (LON:OTMP) have today announced it has been successful in conditionally raising £30 million through the placing of new Ordinary Shares. It is expected that dealings in its shares on AIM will commence on 9 February 2018.
The key proposition of the business remains the creation of an agent-backed, full-scale property portal to disrupt what is otherwise a duopoly of Rightmove and Zoopla by offering a premier search experience to consumers whilst charging sustainably fair prices to agents.
From Admission, the Directors believe the OnTheMarket portal will have over 5,500 branches representing around a third of the total UK residential property listings.
Agents provide the majority of income for the property portals and also supply the majority of their most valuable content – the property listings. As a portal with significant agent support, the Directors believe OnTheMarket.com is uniquely positioned to create an alternative to the leading incumbent portals and to provide an opportunity for a broad base of agents to participate in the equity value of their own portal.
Other key elements of the strategy are:
· increasing the marketing budget to up to £25 million per annum for the first two years to raise the profile of the OnTheMarket.com brand and continue to build the consumer audience;
· investing to scale up the Company’s infrastructure, especially its sales and customer relationship management organisation and its technology development;
· growing substantially the core customer base of estate and lettings agents and other property advertisers using the portal; and
· accelerating agent recruitment and broadening agent backing with the targeted use of equity incentivisation for key agents committing to support the portal with long term listing agreements.
Placing Highlights
· Dealings in the Ordinary Shares are expected to commence at 8.00am on 9 February under the ticker “OTMP” with the ISIN GB00BFN3K335.
· The Placing consists of 18,181,818 new ordinary shares, raising gross proceeds of £30 million for the Company, at a price of 165 pence per ordinary share (“Placing Price”).
· On Admission it is expected that agents will own more than 70 per cent. of the issued share capital.
· The Company’s market capitalisation on Admission, based on the Placing Price, is expected to be £100 million.
Ian Springett, Chief Executive Officer of OnTheMarket plc, said: “We are pleased to have secured the backing of such a high quality investor base. We believe that the new capital, together with our ongoing revenues, will support our strategy to build a strong agent-backed challenger to the incumbent portals. We intend rapidly to extend our customer base of estate and lettings agents, remaining committed to our core principles of offering sustainably fair prices for property advertisers and creating a premier search service for the most active property-seekers. The IPO will enable us to implement our marketing plans to build brand awareness and portal usage as well as to invest to scale up the supporting organisation and infrastructure to the benefit of consumers, agents and investors.”
Zeus Capital acted as Financial Adviser and Broker on the Placing and IPO.
