On a bad day for the stock market generally, Rightmove was among yesterday’s big fallers.
Rightmove’s shares fell by 64p (3%), taking them down to just above the £20 mark, a 52-week low.
The company’s market capitalisation yesterday was £1.97bn: it had been £2.8bn back in January.
Zoopla’s shares fell sharply when trading opened, also to a 52-week low, but recovered to end the day slightly higher at 221p – but a long way down from 275p in July.
Intriguingly, there was a substantial mid-morning trade of 4,394,092 shares at 219p costing £9,623,061. Earlier, the Capital Group of Companies based in Los Angeles notified Zoopla that it had increased its holding above 3% to 13,841,446 shares, from 12,459,824.
Countrywide finished almost even at 473p with its shares significantly below the levels of six months ago, despite buying back its own shares for five days out of the last eight since it announced its buy-back plan.
Foxtons’ share price slide is perhaps the most striking, from a high of 402p in the last year to yesterday’s closing price of 217p.
Stock market jitters are the result of several factors including Ebola, a slowdown of the economies in Europe, plus security threats and turmoil in the Middle East.
Comments (3)
Well it just goes to show how stupid the stock market is, if a company that has no assets of its own is valued at £2B let alone £3B. Even its customers will not produce that level of income for them. Something is seriously wrong with the system. I wonder if insider trading has anything to do with the goings on within RM this year?
It's interesting to note that RM buy back 15,000 shares every day and have done since either 2007 or 2009? I don't have the actual year at hand. This interesting action reduces the number in circulation as they are buying back almost 4 million shares on average per year and over the long term it appears to enhance their and their shareholders position. It's also interesting to note their Directors Share Deals which are openly available online. Undoubtedly the economy news has affected their share price together with brokers downgraded their forecasts of RM highest anticipated share price and some advising it's time to sell RM Shares and take the profits. I think a cold wind is around the corner for the big property portals and the property industry' hence those better experienced than me suggesting its time to move away from RM in particular. I would suggest that on balance it is quite a good time for estate agents to move towards the Agents Mutual portal which is dedicated to their/their clients best interests…. and a share price or making profits will be irrelevant, ensuring that income is directed at growing the portal and NOT the profits. It's astonishing to think that RM with minimal assets and a sales staff had grown in value to almost 3 Billion?!… yesterday at just under 2 Billion and as one commentator noted a share price that seems way overvalued and should be nearer £7 rather than £20! Wasn't it lucky that the RM CEO cashed in £7 Million Pounds worth of shares earlier this year!… he must be a weather forecaster as well….. sense that cold wind….
It is more likely to reflect the negativity from it's customers (estate agents) how these two web portals are disliked and threat of a new one on the horizon has everyone, not just the stock market pondering.