The City continued to show its displeasure in Countrywide’s £140m bail-out, with shares yesterday slipping to another all-time low.
They ended the day at 13p, down 3%, valuing the UK’s largest estate agency chain at a little over £70m, compared with a market valuation for the publicly issued share capital of Purplebricks of £889m.
At one stage Countrywide’s share price sank below 13p, to 12.72p.
Today, new shares created by the cash call are due to start trading.
Analysts seem chiefly concerned that the money raised in the cash call will pay down – although not pay off – Countrywide’s £200m-plus debt mountain, leaving the company very highly geared as it continues its ‘back to basics’ three-year turnaround in poor market conditions.
Comments (4)
does anyone know the properties under management figure?
it’ll be interesting when the asset strippers get in there to see whether they can make the sum of the parts equal more than the whole. Meanwhile, it just shows how nebulous the market is that it can value a smoke and mirrors outfit like PB at 10+ times more than CW which has diversity and a steady long(ish) term income stream. Just shows how optimism (however over hyped) carries a much higher value than pessimism (however over hyped).
Why don’t they start charging better fees rather than trying to be either an online agent or high street agent, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Locally they have lost their presence in the market place and this won’t be corrected by disillusioned investment.
Said it before…they need different ideas in their business, many of which are already used by good independent agents, but no-one will ever ask…. or listen.