Rightmove Unveils Investment Plan To Accelerate Revenue And Profit Growth

Rightmove has just issued a trading update revealing higher-than-expected ARPA (average revenue per advertiser) thanks to the strength of demand from agents for its products.

Since reporting its interim results in July, Rightmove says overall revenue growth has continued to track marginally ahead of consensus expectations, despite uncertainty in the housing market.

The performance underscores the strength and resilience of the business, with both estate agent subscriptions and new homes development listings stable.

Rightmove’s share of consumer time in the second half to date remains unchanged – at c85% – which the portal says demonstrates the strength of the brand, its position with consumers and the established network effect of their business model.

ARPA set to exceed previous guidance

The strength of demand for our products since we last reported means that we now expect ARPA growth for the full year to be £112-116, exceeding our previous guidance of £103-£105.

The majority of the growth has been driven by new homes developers, who have extended their usage of our Native Search Adverts and Advanced Development Listing products to sell their developments.

Estate agents have continued to build their pipelines using a mix of branding, lead-generation and property products.

Other business units performing as expected

Rightmove’s commercial real estate business unit remains on track to deliver its expected full year revenues, continuing to grow as planned. We have also continued to make good strategic progress with its mortgages business, and just last week, it took an important strategic step by launching our first broker product, to enable consumers applying for a mortgage to access brokered advice through the site.

Confidence in full year outlook

The overall full year outlook for 2023 remains at least in line with Rightmove’s previous guidance. In terms of performance, they expect:

• ARPA growth of £112-£116
• Revenue growth of 8% -10%
• Underlying Operating Profit growth of 7-8%
• Underlying margin of c73%

Investor Day

As previously announced, Rightmove are hosting an Investor Day at the London Stock Exchange today, where we they set out their plans to accelerate revenue and profit growth in the medium and longer term, both in the core business and in our identified strategic growth areas of commercial real estate, rentals and mortgages.

Rightmove will set out the detail of its plans to deliver the following by 2028:

Metric	2028 target
Revenue	>£600m
Commercial Real Estate revenue	>£35m
Mortgages revenues	>£25m
Underlying Operating Profit	>£420m

The event will commence at 1:30pm at the London Stock Exchange for pre-registered sell-side analysts and investors and will be available to view via our webcast here: Rightmove Investor Day 2023. The investor website https://plc.rightmove.co.uk/investors will display both the webcast and supporting materials post the event.

Rightmove’s CEO, Johan Svanstrom, said: “The momentum that we reported in July has continued through the third quarter and beyond. The strength of our performance against an uncertain market backdrop demonstrates the strength of the UK consumer affinity to our platform, the value of the established network effect of our business model, the depth and richness of our consumer data, and the value that our customers place in our products to build their businesses. It also illustrates the resilience of our business model in all phases of the property market cycle.

“We continue to look to the future with confidence and remain focused on the delivery of our strategic plans, both in our core business and in strategic growth areas. We look forward to providing more detail at this afternoon’s investor day about our plans to capitalise on the significant growth opportunities ahead.”