OnTheMarket this morning announced a pre-tax loss of £5.7m in the six months to the end of July.
It said that it had group revenue of £7m in the first half of its financial year, during which it floated on AIM and raised £30m through the issue of shares.
Since then, it has recruited more offices, taking the total number to over 11,000 – mostly on free listings. As a result the average revenue per advertiser per month has fallen to £153, down from £194.
OTM was expected to make losses, and the company told the stock market this morning that it has had “a strong start to delivering our transformational growth strategy”.
CEO Ian Springett said: “We said that we would be seeking to rapidly expand our agent base and this has grown from 5,500 branches under listing contracts at 1dmission to more than 11,000 as at 1 October 2018.
“We also committed to substantially higher marketing spend to increase traffic to the website: we launched a new national TV campaign in September, ramped up our expenditure on digital marketing and have run high-impact poster advertising.
“This has resulted in our highest ever traffic performance in September with 17.4m visits.
“Finally we undertook to invest in the OnTheMarket field sales and IT teams to enable us to provide enhanced levels of service for our agent customers and a premier search experience for property-seekers. As at 1 October 2018 we have grown those teams from 36 at Admission to 92.
“Compared with February 2018 when our IPO took place, OnTheMarket has doubled offices and properties listed, trebled monthly visit traffic and quadrupled email and telephone leads to agents.
“Our progress to date and the encouraging support for an agent-backed portal give us confidence that we can continue to build on this early growth to develop a market-leading, agent-backed portal.”
Comments (22)
How are those £5 shares doing Ian promised everyone for selling their soul? 😉
Interesting – So its now free to advertise on for new agents?
If so then I will give it a go, see the responses and go from there. Would love to drop RM if possible but OTM has to be viable.
The fact that you didn’t know it is currently free would suggest to me that OTM are missing out on thousands and thousands of new customers who are not aware of this.
Why don’t they at least plaster it all over PIE (adverts and articles) use the agent email databases, and write out to everyone (as apparently EWEMOVE are able to do)?
It is surely ridiculous, when you are trying to give something away for nothing, to find out people haven’t taken advantage….simply because they didn’t know!
OTM are doing exactly what they should. Build the number of agents and build the public visits to the site. This will cost plenty but is the only way to reach the critical mass needed to be the serious player it aspires to be. Agents should support this strategy , especially in light of the comments about RM this morning.
Why did they not do this three years ago as promised?
Why push agents into agreeing a float and then do this?
Rottern to the core.
Funds.Funds.Funds.
To get where they need to get to will cost more than they had and they will probably need more.
5,000 paying cirica £350 per month = is 1.75 million per month or 21 million per annum. They had the funds …….
Surprised there is no big announcement by IS today – the corporates are very slow to sign up to OTM.
Perhaps IS and the board are busy looking for the exit?
Have you not had the email from the PR team today telling you to email all your database about OTM #Desperate
SP – arrived in my inbox at 10.00am.
Do you think the Corporates are playing chicken with IS or is there another vulture circling overhead looking for an easy meal? (probably not RM given the main story today).
Something has to happen before February or a lot of the original members will simply walk away.
I think the corporates are boxing clever.
its costs LSL, Connells and CW £125 per month per branch to list on RM & Z – They have preferential rates.
Why help OTM they have no need to. Even if they are given a free listing period like the rest of us they will have to pay something at the end, Even at £50 per month its an extra 50k per month for CW. 600k p.a.
I.S. has shown time and again he cannot be trusted. I am sure he has a plan to dupe agents further, he is very clever even though not trustworthy.
It was stated by IS that the Corporates would be given shares to join OTM – if they work together they could hold out for a very generous allocation in return for dropping RM or Z.
Maybe they will offer to buy out IS shares?
I cant see it happening, How many shares at £1.30 makes it worthwhile for them to ditch a lucrative relationship with RM?
Remember CW have already tried launching their own portal that nobody (even the staff) know about.
I hope OTM is watching the rightmove stories very closely and learns that to gain business and loyalty of all agents it should be very careful in their pricing model and ensure the service they provide and costs they charge are commensurate with the value of the service and not just some made up numbers to pay huge dividends to directors and shareholders of OTM.
There are many lessons to be learned from Rightmove and if OTM want to be a serious forerunner they will have to take a bit of pain in the short term to build up loyalty and growth ( paying growth).The must not try to fleece the hand that will ultimately feed them and stay loyal to them. I hope they get it right.
…….and as I continue to pay every single month, contractually/unfairly locked in …..my money is being burned in front of me.
V2 better be worth it! …….just another portal is an added cost none of us needs.
The Jury remains firmly out until those that don’t pay have to commit financially …..I have committed financially every single month from when OTM took its 1st breath!
******, I was hoping for a Divi this year.
ha ha.
Ian not a big enough one for you?
Like what you did there smile 🙂 like it…
Well done OTM. Your leads are getting stronger and stronger every week.
RM leads on the other hand are becoming weaker.
Absolutely agree. My agency is fully behind the OTM business plan…. looking forward to seeing how it plays out Iver the next 12months.
I can save you 1 year or even maybe 3… it will be exactly the same but rightmove will probably be 10% more expensive.