The chief financial officer at Purplebricks and the wife of chief executive Michael Bruce bought shares worth £2.8m for less than £20,000 last Friday.
Chief financial officer Neil Cartwright bought 1.9m shares for 1p – a tiny fraction of Friday’s share price which closed at 141.5p.
It means the 48-year-old paid £19,400 for a holding currently worth around £2.8m.
Isabel Bruce, 32, a human resources administrator, paid £426 for shares worth £60,500.
Cartwright and Bruce were granted options to buy stock in the business at a discount as part of the company’s remuneration policy.
It takes the Bruces’ holding to 16.9% of the stock, worth £20.3m in total, while Cartwright owns 0.8%. The pair will not be able to sell the stock until December.
Yesterday, Purplebricks’ share price shot up at one time during trading to 150p – and could double, according to one broker.
Peel Hunt initiated coverage of Purplebricks yesterday, giving it a ‘buy’ rating and a price target for the shares of 300p.
However, despite the recommendation, the shares ended the day at 143.50p, just 2p up on the opening price.
Comments (15)
Greetings from the bottom of the pond. Please can you help me out with the maths it seems I am struggling
Purplebrick’s turnover £18.6 million
Purplebrick’s operational loss £11.9 million
Purplebrick’s total spend on ‘stuff” £30.5 million
Average UK selling price £271,000
Purplebrick’s value of property sold £2.8 billion
Purplebrick’s volume of property sold 10332
Purplebricks conversion rate (claimed) 77%
Purplebricks volume of property listed 13418
Purplebrick’s income per property listed £1386.20
Purplebrick’s spend per property listed £2273.07
Purplebrick’s profit per property listed -£886.87 (the minus sign means their profit per property is a loss? I have got that right they lose nearly £1000 per property listed, Wow that is a lot!!!)
If the actual income per property is £1386.20 why would they use £665 as the figure on which to base their claimed savings against traditional agency fees? If the UK average selling fee is calculable at £3902.40 and their average cost of sale is £1386.20 the average saving for using Purplebrick’s is £2516.20 (0.9%). That is quite a lot different to what they reckon. It’s a good job no-one at ASA is any good at maths otherwise they might have to uphold a formal complaint about claimed fee savings.
if the total number of properties listed (derived from the numbers published) is 13418 that is only 1118 per month. 1118 is only 37% of the 3000 per month they have said they are listing so that can’t be right can it?
If their average income per property is £665 (much closer to the number used to calculate fee savings) it works out they are listing a lot more than 13418 properties. £18.6 million turnover is 29970 lots of £665 which is still only 83% of what they claim.
If Purplebrick’s are listing 29970
Purplebrick’s completions 10332
Purplebrick’s conversion rate is 34.47% not 77% as claimed. (you can see why the maths is sooo confusing)
Can you see why I am troubled with the maths? There is a lot of confusing and contradictory information being published, how on earth is pond dweller expected to understand all of it?
Either the fees are higher or the conversion rate is lower, it doesn’t really matter the cost of selling about 10332 properties was £11.9 million less than was received for listing an indeterminable number of properties.
I’ll be here all morning if we get any deeper into their maths but if they are spending £8m on selling property what are they spending the other £22.5m on? and how on earth do they expect to cover that huge amount with a £65 margin between their claimed listing costs and the fee they claim to charge?
I might be a naive, pond dwelling fool but I out performed Purplebricks by over £11.9m
Me thinks this story will go out of sight today but really should be picked up by EYE as a major concern for the industry and go national media. The public are being duped. The only winner is the fat cat directors who draw salary while the business runs at a loss. The answer to your question Robert is …£22.5m is going into someone pocket, guess who?
As a high street agent it pains me somewhat to say that everyone who scoffs the PB model will either be out of business or following it in some way in the next 5 years….you have been warned.
Take it seriously and learn from them
“Take it seriously and learn from them”
In what way should we, in your opinion, “learn” from them?
So you think the future of the industry paul is to not worry about selling a clients property, just worry about listing them, pyramid sell to get other protagonists and then all of you take the cash and wish the client good luck?
And that business model will last for precisely how long before the stupid ol customers get wise to it!?!
Sounds to me you have thrown the towel in. On-line will not ever, ever take over from the High Street. Just look at what people who have used them are saying about ALL the on-line agents for so many years…. pretty poor service (not forgetting PB is seriously in debt and not made any profit), for they have forgotten the one golden rule of business by trying to buy their customers, listen to your customer!
nothing to learn.
Not about client care
negotiation
pricing or
sales progression.
Any farm yard animal can list at ****** all fees!
Replace the ‘g’s with ‘9’s and typing ‘bu99er’ works as sweet as a treat, PP – see!
;o)
It makes me wonder what they need £20k for that they possibly couldn’t raise any other way at short notice. VAT perhaps? TPO registration fees who knows? Don’t really care but reckon if one did ask there would be a carefully crafted response that either contradicts something said before or is mathematically confusing.
Nice to get a handle on the confidence the CFO has in the project, that say a lot.
Robert,
“Cartwright and Bruce were granted options to buy stock in the business at a discount as part of the company’s remuneration policy.”
Hint : “… granted options…” – the couple simply exercised their option to buy shares at the pre-agreed price. The normal ‘hold’ rule applies to the stock; they can dump in 6 months time if they wish and realise the capital gain.
So, this was not a capital raise of any sort, for any reason.
Sorry to call you out on this one, but naivety needs to be met with fact.
Is share price a guarantee of a firm’s ability to pay it’s creditors?
Please don’t apologise for calling me out, you’ve provided the readers with a partial explanation of the reasoning behind the options. Let’s hope for their sake the share price more than a penny in 6 months time.
Something to add:
I can’t stop laughing at the idea a company with a market cap of circa £340m would need to raise £20k.
This is pond-life analysis and the response reads accordingly. Hilarious.
Would you like to run through some more pond-life analysis? I’ve got some really interesting stuff about things like cost of sales and a £multi million gap between income and expenditure in one financial year. I don’t mind the ridicule, what do you reckon, shall we discuss the £65 left over after the cost of sale has been covered and how many 65 quids it takes to re-coup a shed load of cash already lost before they start on delivering the HUGE profits they promised to divi out in 2016?
“…how many 65 quids it takes to re-coup a shed load of cash already lost…”
Somewhere around 183,000 by my reckoning.
Almost 900 per “Expert”.
Interesting times ahead, methinks…
Buy Buy Buy.
Sell, Sell Sell
It’s OK it’s only PB!