Zoopla’s revenue and profits have moved sharply upwards as it both charges more to agents and attracts more agent advertisers. Traffic to the site has also increased, by 37% over the last year.
This morning, announcing its half year results for the six months to March 31, Zoopla said average revenue per member per month was £301, compared with £251 for the same period a year ago.
It had 19,239 advertisers, up from 17,803. There were on average 39.9m monthly visits to Zoopla, up from 29m.
However, the number of property listings barely changed over the year – 1,097,000 at March 31, compared with 1,064,000 on the same date last year.
Revenues for the half year stood at £38.3m, up from £30.3m, with adjusted earnings before all tax and costs (EBITDA) at £18.7m compared with £14.8m.
Zoopla also said that mobile devices now account for over half of the monthly site visits, and that Zoopla agents are “benefiting from higher volumes of enquiries and as a result are increasingly purchasing additional products over and above the standard subscription packages”.
It said the most popular additional marketing products are premium listings, appraisal boosters, and area sponsorships.
Zoopla’s property valuations – controversial with agents – are also being well used, at an average of over four per minute.
Zoopla founder and chief executive Alex Chesterman said: “We are delighted with the strong growth in our audience and engagement levels over the first half of this year as more and more consumers rely on our websites and mobile apps to both search for properties and research the property market.
“We remain focused on building a sustainable and profitable business and continuing to deliver on our mission of providing the most useful property resources for consumers and being the most effective partner for property professionals across the UK.
“We are pleased that we have continued to deliver even greater value to our members whilst group revenues have grown and as a result we were able to pay an interim dividend to our shareholders of £14m for the period.”
Nothing in today’s announcement referred to a flotation on the stock market, which could value the business – majority owned by the Daily Mail – at £1bn.
Comments (25)
paul , I far from have the answer to everything and Mark was asking me a question best answered by the only AM gold member who posts openly on here. That is a credit to you. Would you not agree that you are more likely to have the answer Mark's question than I?
Whether you are an official or unofficial spokesman you have been selling the benefits ofAM and as far as I can see Mark's question was an opportunity to further spread the message. In doing so you might convince me or other non posting agents who share my concerns.
Ampersat…I get the feeling that even if Ian Springett came to your house, personally cooked you a 6 course gourmet meal, got you drunk on copious amounts of Bollinger and promised you 5 years of free advertising you would still be unconvinced!
Although it's just a hunch;-)
All that is required of Ian Springett is to understand that 79% of agents have concerns about the AM proposal, its timing and plans for roll out and that before he achieves the viable mass of agents to make the whole thing work nationally rather than just in the capital he needs to address agents' concerns.
See there you go again Ampersat. You are now implying that AM is a predominantly London supported portal – this is just not the case as around 70% of the current gold members are based outside London and across the whole country.
I'm sure any concerns that any agents have will be raised in due course, currently I do not have any and nothing since when I signed has persuaded me otherwise….The proposal was announced in June 2013, I took my time to assess the plans, attended a meeting and had my solicitors check over the contract. I along with many others did not jump in and assessed the plans in full, I doubt you have even attended a meeting/presentation judging by the figures that you keep quoting, as if you have so many concerns (that you clearly keep stating) then why not attend a meeting and raise those concerns directly with Ian Springett?!
Sorry have I got the wrong impression from the PR published, I can only go on what has been issued.
As for the figure I quoted earlier they were based on a real life case and known averages and transaction levels. They have nothing to do with AM but are the true costs of how agencies interact with the main two portals. Nothing in the AM PR or the presentation comes close to understanding those figures, it is clear you see your own salvation with AM, genuinely good luck.
Guys I didn't mean to start a heated debate. I have developed websites and continue to do so for not only our own property business but I also offer the same "site in a box" to other agents if they wish to have one at reduced cost.
Granted I use software that has already been written and build on that to make it work for me as I want it to work. The reason for this is because I didn't want to re-invent the wheel and use what is available on the market.
@Ampersat, do you know if AM have any information on what they will be offering in terms of functionality and features on the website they are developing. I am not trying to catch anyone out but this information may be of use to other agents looking for a viable alternative to Zoopla and RM and may encourage more to sign up? Although I do have to say that I am not discouraged by Zoopla for the price I pay compared to what RM are trying to charge me!
Don't worry about the debate Mark, that is what the PIE comment stream is here for. Paul H would the better chap to ask about the features of AM that have not been published to the media.
Why would I be the best chap? Come on Ampersat surely you would know the answer – you seem to know the answer to everything!! 😉
Has anyone noticed that 75% of PRE-tax profits and costs are destined for the shareholders (£14m out of £18.7m)? So much for re-investment in the site ! And this on top of a 20% increase in average revenue per member. With continuing rampant increases in rates from both main portals and their attitude of 'blind- eyeing' landlords and others to list effectively for free via third party websites, there would seem to be huge merit in supporting the efforts of a group that is attempting to take them on.
@Ampersat, I disagree, if a site can be setup correctly without the massive overheads and be controlled by a few staff there is no need for large amounts to be taken from accounts every month. RM cant have this in place as they still send the ***** invoices in the post! We do have email now RM.
Trevor… that is £99 per month though.
@ Blue – Be it £99 pcm or for longer its a cheap price for main portals to allow a competitor in to traditional Hg St and Traditional online comm models.
In the next 18 months were see more budget models swamp the duoploy swamp Im sure (if the main two portals allow). The only way to deflate the situation is to take less importance (AND CONTENT) off RM and Z.
AM will be good in that it will pull an amount of agent funding to a different place and hopefully Google will allocate less importance to RM and Z. Google algorithms are revamping the way content is indexed to provide a better user experience. So even if bigger RM and Z may suffer from Googles changed search algorithms based on where original content is first shown.
Paull do you have any experience running a Portal, a website or a service industry to Estate Agents? Add £100 to your estimate of costs. Realistically to offer a meaningful and robust service to Estate Agents and Property Managers, pay a competent management team, development, sales and support team along with the necessary SEO and credibility charges Agents ought to dismiss any portal offering below £140/ month as un-viable (£120/ month if you can find philanthropic investors who don't want a profit)
If you don't think me correct re-visit (if you must) the old place, there are 309 entries for portals set to challenge the Duopoly. Property Live was free and Agents didn't support it. Portal offerings, like Estate Agency should not be free or cheap but should offer value for money and be long term sustainable.
@Mark they are writing a portal from scratch instead of using one that was up/ working and well supported, one which could have been re-branded tested and switched on months ago. It is very unlikely that if launched in January2015 the site will be out of beta release for another 6-9 months thereafter and even if perfect on 01/01/15 the roll out, training and bedding down is likely to take a minimum 20 weeks to reach all 2000 initial users. Other than the one portal rule that excludes 'Friend' portals as well as 'Foe' portals my biggest concern is that despite the mutual nature of AM with one agent, one vote the biggest decisions have already been made and in my opinion it was a mistake to wait for the white sheet portal without making do with one of the many that were and are available to carry them through the months before delivery.
By not finding a vehicle to cater for the rollout of the portal ahead of the release they have demonstrated an unexpected naivety of the logistics and added an unnecessary delay to the go live and credible date.
"By not finding a vehicle to cater for the rollout of the portal ahead of the release they have demonstrated an unexpected naivety of the logistics and added an unnecessary delay to the go live and credible date."
How do you know that they haven't, don't forget that this portal has been in the offing since June 2013?!
If you are to believe that AM is completely flawed then it would be fair to assume that you may also be of the opinion that; 2200 of the countries leading agencies, be they big or small) and some of the leading industry figures and entrepreneurs with years of experience are quite gullable and naïve for wanting to back it and part with their money.
Here we are again Paul, now the BH weekend is over someone will be in touch.
Please don't put words into my mouth I do not think AM is completely flawed and have not said that at anytime. That post actually supports AM in the face of someone who reckons the job of Property Portaling can be done for 10% of the monthly subs of AM.
In pointing out there might be a logistics issue rolling a portal out to 2200 customers covered by *** software companies all of which have to have a working upload link. I am not saying the idea is flawed but making sure someone has thought of it. It was a reply to Mark's question why it is taking so long to deliver a solution. It is with some frustration I know a workable interim option was available to them long before June last year.
Instead of getting irritated and trying the let's paint him a vibrant shade of troll try to understand read a bit deeper into what I am typing and understand one or two of the 2200 might just want to check the finer detail of what you have signed up to.
If all is in place come back and tell us you have been reassured that on 01/01/14 http://www.AgentsMutual. co.uk/ Com/ BIZ? will be live and working for all 2200 of you and that applicants will overnight have a credible third option when searching for properties.
@ampersat :
I have a lot of experience building and running a high traffic portal.
Adding £100 to Paull's £20 makes £120 a month which is about triple what it needs to run the Infrastructure (Servers) and Advetising departments.
Any sales staff would have to be accounted for. Agencies and Agents should not be charged for developers ineptness and lack of knowledge of how to build an efficient system/portal that doens't take large infrastructures to run.
If you read the whole of my post rather than picking out the bits you know about you might start to understand that I included the hard stuff along with the easy bits.
There is good reason why Agents mutual have set their subs even higher than I am suggesting, perhaps you will be suggesting that those who are experienced in building and establishing a portal have mis calculated their figures too. It is wrong to focus on the technical costs of a portal; that demonstrates a naivety of this particular niche business. Agents do not need a much cheapness solution they need one that will stand the test of time and grow with their needs
Whilst Zoopla and Rightmove operate in a duopoly they will continue to exploit their position. It is for this very reason that Zoopla acquired (and subsequently closed) so many competitors.
However, I do agree that building and operating a property portal is challenging. The success of a large scale property portal depends entirely on the foundation platform technology which sits behind the visible user-interface. This platform must be employ multi-level keyword drivers capable of automatically serving each and every property description as a distinct web page specifically optimized for the Google Search Engine Algorithm. This is non-trivial. Here at LocalPropertyIndex we have spent eight years perfecting our Ranking Engine Technology so that we can automatically accommodate every property type and location. This technology can not be purchased off-the-shelf and is a cornerstone of a portals ability to sustain growth.
Im guessing a lot of the new signups are budget models like Purple Bricks or worse: http://www.partnersestates.com/index.html .
Partners website show 'sell your home from £99' and 'let a property from £79'. On their site I also don't see a TPOS or Ombudsman Services logo. Its not right that zoopla allow budgets in. ….
I agree that Zoopla is moving up the scales, but for some unknown reason Rightmove continues to be ahead. We get no leads at all from Zoopla, even with the appraisal booster we still got none. Right move is way too expensive for us as a small business even with their recent promotion of 50% off for 6 months!
I agree Paull, it's not hard to run a portal with very little staff. Our website has the ability to have other agents advertising their properties just like Rightmove & Zoopla but I just not pursued that side of the business.
My last question, why is it taking so long for Agents Mutual to launch?
OC I know that £20 pcm is not going to get TV adverts but if enough agents plugged the portal, window stickers, business cards etc and the site did more than just list properties I think this could be a winner.
The biggest mistake I made and quickly rectified was displaying the Rightmove window stickers and cards in my previous High St office. I thought, "what on earth am I doing PAYING another business so I can advertise its brand on my office that I pay for".
A massive con Paull – I should have spent it on my own business adverts, not on a major portal's who then uses my advertising spend to pay dividends to its shareholders. Doagh!
SO CORRECT !!!!!
There should be a portal charging minimal fees, £20 or so pcm, it does not require massive amounts of staff to run a portal, a few developers and support for agents, all we pay for is loads of sales reps upping our fees.
Its funny you should mention this…I am a web designer based in Kent and I am seriously considering attempting to shake up the portal model. I am trying to work out a way to fund it as the advertising required to compete with Rightmove and Zoopla will be massive. It would be open to all private sellers, landlords and proper estate/lettings agents and would have a fee no greater than £50 per month for agencies. Private sellers would be able to advertise for, say, £10 per property and have a limit of one at a time. Landlords would probably have a scalable package dependent on number of properties but the whole idea is to make it good value. Rightmove and Zoopla are plain greedy and are targets waiting to be shot at.
I would very much appreciate opinions from estate agents on how to carry out this project – I want to save you money!!