Rightmove’s long-standing finance director Robyn Perriss has announced that she is to stand down after presiding over revenue that has leapt almost five-fold during her 12-year tenure. The shares are also trading at a record high.
The date of her departure has not been announced but is likely to be during the second quarter of next year. She will continue in her role over the coming months and support the recruitment of her successor.
Perriss, who is well liked and respected in the City, said: “It has been an enormous privilege to have been part of the Rightmove journey and its success for more than a decade.
“I am immensely proud to have worked in such an outstanding and innovative growth business and alongside so many talented Rightmovers.
“Rightmove is in a strong financial position with exciting opportunities ahead as it continues to innovate to make home moving easier.”
CEO Peter Brooks Johnson said: “Robyn has been a huge asset to Rightmove. In the dozen years she has been with Rightmove, firstly as financial controller and latterly as finance director, Rightmove’s revenue has grown by nearly five times.
“Robyn has been an integral part of this journey, most notably through guiding our finance function as it has developed during a period of strong growth and ensured that our investors remained informed and fully engaged.”
With Rightmove shares currently riding high, one measure of her success has been the sheer number of times that investors have been urged to get on board by City writers.
Rupert Hargreaves is among the latest to recommend the shares, calling Rightmove a growth champion.
He said: “Rightmove is one of the handful of tech champions listed in London today. Over the past decade, this business has carved out a niche in the property market and today it’s the go-to site for both home buyers and sellers.
“As the company only connects buyers with sellers and doesn’t get involved in property transactions, it doesn’t have to worry about the state of the property market or any of the other uncertainties that come with buying and selling homes.
“Instead, all Rightmove does is sit back and collect fees from sellers.
“As a result, the company has some of the best profit margins of all the businesses listed on the London market.”
Hargreaves said that last year Rightmove’s operating profit margin was 74%.
He said analysts are expecting the firm to report a net income of £176m for 2019, a compound annual growth rate of more than 16%.
Hargreaves added: “As well as this explosive earnings growth, Rightmove is also returning money to investors with share buybacks and dividends.”
Yesterday, Rightmove’s shares closed slightly up at 594p, near to their record high of around 603p on October 28.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/5k-invest-d-buy-ftse-083238672.html?guccounter=1
Comments (41)
We left Rightmove in June and as much as hate to say it, we are going back on with them. Every Valuation has the same outcome as soon as you say we are not on Rightmove bla bla bla, i have tried every pitch to give us credit for doing so and the only comment we get in feedback is sorry i cant go with an Agent who isnt on Rightmove. Vendors are programmed with Rightmove, its like trying to convince someone that you don’t need a knife and fork to eat your dinner, there are chop sticks or spoons, its never going to change and its obvious that leaving just doesn’t work. So all you specialist non Estate Agents saying just leave, thats all well and good if you want to go bankrupt.
Oh and propertypundit you really need to stop posting hope for agents. there isnt any and your advise is unfounded.
WrongMove
I’d give up Estate Agency if I were you.
Trust me – your future lies as a BDM for Rightmove.
Ooh look you all with your we know best comments.
if you have 300+ managed properties and are a 1 branch independent, then I have a choice with portals that isn’t all financial based then yes I agree, I need more training lmao. We tried it and it doesn’t work. That’s reality. So come on experts explain this one. When we left we had 27 properties listed. When we wrote to every vendor to explain why and how we have developed a very similar sm tool much like flink and dozens of other benefits. 19 left including 11 that were still in fixed term and threatened to go to tpo saying we breached our contract. Our contract stated major portals not specific portals.
ive also looked back over the last 3 years of publicised agents that left Rightmove. 87% after searching yesterday are back on Rightmove. I shall read all your replies tonight as I’m busy today trying to sell sand to an Arab.
“19 left including 11 that were still in fixed term”
WHY did they leave? Why didn’t they just leave their property with you, and go multi with an Agent on Rightmove if that was their real beef?
Did you even offer that? I somehow doubt it.
Sorry – but so much of what you have said in your posts reads like a script.
And you’re the only one believing the plot.
“I shall read all your replies tonight as I’m busy today trying to sell sand to an Arab.”
And that’s where you are going badly… sadly… wrong. You don’t “sell sand” to an Arab.
You sell the benefits of the sand.
Jeez – you need more help that I thought…
Ahh PeeBee, you are clearly doing very well for yourself (Expert), we didn’t offer Multi Agent as we don’t do Multi agent. We never have and never will. Still, listings are up, profits up, managed porfolio up, income up.
Cant really see the issue currently. Unless you know different PeeWee. Of course a look at your profit and LOSS would make an interesting read I’m sure. Your too opinionated for a winner lol. This was scripted as well Winner.
Yesterday:
“Every Valuation has the same outcome as soon as you say we are not on Rightmove”
Today:
“Still, listings are up”
How’s that work, then?
“we didn’t offer Multi Agent as we don’t do Multi agent.”
So – let me get this straight… you’d rather that 70% of your register withdrew than try to rescue
a) costs already incurred
b) damaged reputation already incurred
and also prove your initial point (clearly more necessary to you than your clients) that you didn’t need to be on Rightmove.
Sounds like a plan to me!
Oh – never claimed to be an “Expert”. Don’t consider myself to be one – not by a long chalk.
But I can smell *** from three counties away – so maybe that’s my field of “expertise”.
(And as far as the old “PeeWee” thing goes – matey it’s been used by waaaaay bigger and better than you. Still – if that futile attempt at insult makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside then I’ve accomplished something, and I’m not even going to send you a bill for it… that’s the kind of nice guy I am.
Actually, I’d never charge someone whose bar is set so drastically, worryingly, low)
Nighty night, “Winner”.
PeeWee you have a good day now. PeeWee the keyboard Warrior
…and there the story ended.
Rumbled good and proper, WrongMove (and I didn’t even have to pick the right name for him/her/prefers-not-to-disclose) bimbles off (credit: Jonnie) into the ether having spread a mahoosive wad of MDT waaaaay too thinly; spat out an insult or two… feeling all warm and fuzzy. And dampish, no doubt.
Oh – and best part of two grand a month worse off, I reckon – what with all those shiny add-ons eagerly signed up to that guarantee squillions of listings…
Farewell, WrongMove. I will miss you and all that sail in you.
PeeWee, your a laughing stock and know one really gives a *** about your BS. You thinks your the new Quirk (Quack) and he’s a respected figure in the Industry NOT. Warm and Fuzzy, showing your age old timer. Someones had too much Horlicks, get back in that comfy chair and educate yourself some more with Homes under the Hammer, there’s a good boy. Have you noticed all your comebacks are pointless, non factual, and lets be honest you really have made yourself look like a Di&K again. What a dull fruitless life you must lead.
“your a laughing stock…”
Nice to think people are having a laugh – waaay too much bad stuff in the world at the minute.
“…and know one really gives a Toss about your BS”
That’s fine by me. I don’t post for anyone’s benefit.
“You thinks your the new Quirk (Quack)”
Actually I think he modelled the best bits of him (I’m sure there are some… somewhere… on me.
“…showing your age old timer.”
I would like to think that certain aspects of my posts reflect my age – spelling and grammar being two of those aspects.
Using those measures to ‘age’ people, it would seem that you’re not out of primary school yet.
I assure you that my life is neither dull nor fruitless. Why, as seen here on EYE I have been engaging with the profoundly hard of thinking since yesterday lunchtime. I always make time for such lost causes – my way of giving back for all the joys I have been blessed with.
I’ll leave you with a couple of suggestions. In fact – I’m going to round it up to three – rules of life that you seem not to have learned yet.
Firstly, I suggest you learn to spell and construct sentences – or at least check stuff before you post/publish. (Those failings could be a factor in your inability to gain instructions)
Secondly, work on getting your story straight and consistent before you gob off wildy – and thereby completely blow your own b0ll0cks out of the water – like you have above.
Lastly – try to remember to brush before rinsing.
There you go – free advice always happily given. Hopefully you’ll manage to get one of those three above ‘rules’ right.
I’m riding off into the sunset now.
Adios, “Winner”
I’m sorry you’re not much of a salesman with little confidence in your own and your company’s ability to take on property without an external website. I agree with Peebee, sounds like you’ve already thrown in the towel.
Agreed. A competent Valuer would be able to counter that client objection – and in doing so enhance the reasons to use their agency. If you know how you can turn not being on a particular portal, or indeed any portal, to advantage.
Try asking the vendor why they asked you for the valuation and the real reason why they wouldn’t go with you, you had your foot in the door! If you still claim it is because you are not on RM, you need a new script.
@wrongmove
Are you a Right Move employee?
If not – you are a poor sales person and need to go back to EA training school.
We have never had an issue with not having Righmove Move – we came off Rightmove July 2017. Will never go back – no need.
Robyn Bas£@?d is probably a better title.
“Rightmove is in a strong financial position with exciting opportunities ahead as it continues to innovate to make home moving easier.”
Isnt it us the agents that facilitate the move? all Rm do is advertise some details , agents were selling property long before the interweb , why should now be any different ? if you have the property people will find you by whatever means , basic i know but as fewer and fewer agents renmain on Rm people will have to search harder to find the property they want.
Time to stop feeding the beast that bites you….!!.
Change the article:
”Leading estate agent leaves board after quintupling profits during tenure….”
What would you all say? “Well done, what a great agent, one of the good ones etc etc?”
Or would you all say “yeah well they fleeced sellers out of fees which went up gradually over time as they became more and more successful in a supply and demand market.”
Rightmove are the same as your business. If you become the market leader in your town, you can afford to be better and charge higher fees. Why treat Rightmove any differently.
If you don’t like it, leave Rightmove. You may succeed and say “told you so” if you’re really good. Well done. Stick it to the man! Or, if you’re just the same as the agent up the road with no USP’s and wallow in your own pity party about the cost of everything, you may leave and fail miserably. If you’re somewhere in between the two, use Rightmove as an excuse to grow your business to the point you don’t need it OR that the cost is insignificant because you sell and let LOADS of homes.
But for gods sake, don’t sit here, having moans about Rightmove and costs and how annoyed you are that they have made themselves pivotal to your business because you’ve allowed it to happen, if you’re not willing to do something about it.
Rant over.
brokerofexcellence
A point or two if I may.
Brave words from one connected to the industry – but then from behind a thin veil of anonymity I guess you have little worry of some of your Agent clients thanking you for rubbing their noses in the dogsh!t the industry at large finds itself in.
Said Estate Agent in your analogy will have quintrupled profitability by a combination of factors, including an increase in market share allied with increased fees – and house price growth dependent on location.
Unfortunately I do not have Rightmove figures going back 12 years – but I can go back to 2009.
Rightmove have, from H1 2009 to H1 2019, increased their advertisers – “market share” – by 19.76%.
Rightmove have increased their ARPA (“fees”) in the same period by 249%.
Other than a few NSPR portal listing facilitators who have increased their fees from “suicidal” to “cutting-ones-own-throat” over the last few years – but still appear to be haemorrhaging cash – show me one Estate Agent in the UK that was charging a fee ten years ago that they have managed to triple-and-a-bit.
I won’t even bother asking about any that have 5x’d…
Of course you are right. Agents have a choice – leave Rightmove or stay. Just like you have a choice – offer one product or many.
As you call yourself “brokerof…”, I’m guessing you’re not a tied agent and offer some form of ‘whole of market’.
Why? Because you believe it gives you a better chance of winning business – simple as.
Don’t throw stones when the house around you is made of soda-lime silicate.
The point is, and you and I make the same point, it’s like it or lump it. Zoopla isn’t a viable alternative, neither is the joke that is OTM. Prime location? Agents own websites?
End users, ie buyers, use RM. It’s their marketing that got them to that stage. It means they’ve monopolised the portal market and no one agent is going to change that. I rely on RM as that’s what my clients use to find properties 80% of the time, the other 20% use Zoopla/OTM/Social Media etc. and any agent or BDM working for the portals that tells you any different is kidding themselves.
Do I agree they should charge so much? Not necessarily. Do I think they’ve probably got the ability to charge what they want in light of end user (buyers) demands? Yes. Will 75% of agents moan but do nothing and carry on paying it? Probably. Are agents doing enough to be able to tell a seller on a market appraisal that they don’t need RM/Zoopla/OTM and can generate viewings and house sales without them? Definitely not.
So the options are either stop moaning and get on with it or stop moaning, leave RM and see how you get on. Either way, it involves stopping moaning. There are plenty of agents not using RM relatively successfully, so there is precedent for it. Simples.
You say “…it’s like it or lump it.”
Yes – it is if you look at it purely one-dimensionally as you are. EVERY ‘black or white’ decision only has two options.
It’s the “What if…?” that gets in the way of the decision – and the “What if…?s” for this particular decision are a billion shades of inbetween.
The decision makers are either caring employers who, whilst trying to make themselves rich or at least compfortably well-off, are also extremely conscious that the wrong decision could have avderse effects on their staff as well as themselves; or simple bean-counters who blindly rely on everything to add something to their chance of increasing the top line – regardless of the cost to the bottom line.
To the latter, it doesn’t matter how many goals you concede as long as you score the same or more.
To the former – this isn’t the decision between high quality laser paper and economy for a mail-out.
This is do or die. Or somewhere else.
Or they are people somewhere in between those extremes. One of those billion shades again.
My thoughts on Rightmove… Zoopla… and OnThe Market are well documented here on EYE and EAT also, so I won’t bore people here any more than I have to. But I’ll just park one comment, from 2014, here…
“the portals are animals. WE bred them: WE fed them: WE tickled their tummies and told everyone what clever animals they were… and now WE threaten to cut off their food and attention.
Like any animal, they revert to wild instincts when the chips are down.
Self preservation is the only acceptable result for them – survival of the fittest.
You can’t be surprised – it’s written into every animal’s DNA…”
Gotcha. So what exactly, apart from posting your post from 2014 again (for the second time this week) is your plan to counteract it? I’m not seeing the billions of options in between – I’m seeing stick or twist. Are you saying that 5 years on from your original “prediction” of sorts that there is no merit in the portals anymore? If so, are you on them? Or are you saying there is merit in them, despite the cost, and again I ask, are you on them?
“…again I ask, are you on them?”
I didn’t see the question the first time you say you posted it. Apologies if I missed it.
The answer is no. But that’s because currently I am not an Estate Agent.
Just me or are other people getting a bit of sick in their mouth when reading this article?
‘Perriss, who is well liked and respected in the City‘, I bet she is!
‘it doesn’t have to worry about the state of the property market ‘, Translation: We don’t care if the market and/or your business is on its a$$e, your prices are going up massively again.
‘analysts are expecting the firm to report a net income of £176m for 2019, a compound annual growth rate of more than 16%‘, pay up suckers
She knows what’s coming!
We have handed in our notice already and due to come off at the end of December. The arrogance of Rightmove is unbelievable. It’s our data and they have the cheek to rinse us for it.
Well done!
A smart move on your part. Coming up to 2 years since I binned them and business is good.
I’m pretty annoyed at myself for accepting the rates I currently pay RM for so long.
I do think the tide is slowly turning though as more people like me make tough, but ultimately sensible decisions. There is not a single other supplier that we pay anywhere this much to. Our ROI is far less than in previous years, based on leads generated, mainly as many of the products are available to more agents.
I have spoken to two former RM employees who said that their target is to have the average branch paying £2000 + per month. (And get less for it!)
Like drug addicts complaining that their dealer is rich.
Spend a few £££ on cleaning up your processes and walk away.
Excellent work by Robyn, which is a very apt name, as she no doubt moves onto her next much tougher business venture of selling snow to eskimos…. we really are all having the p*** taken out of us….
74% profit margin, just goes to show how much RM screw their customers. Agents only have themselves to blame.
Light touch paper Ros and relax…. 🙂
Bonfire night was last week
Moan, moan, moan. Rinse and repeat. Either pay up or or don’t.There is life beyond Rightmove if you choose to go there.
Agreed. Not posted this for a while but it gets increasingly relevant with each passing day:
Today’s action plan for agents:
1. Cancel your Rightmove subscription, make the call TODAY, don’t delay another day
2. If you’re not ready to give up Rightmove membership, only subscribe to the most basic package, ditch micro-sites, banners and featured properties.
3. If you’re not giving up RM membership just yet, remove all Rightmove stickers in your office, logos from stationery & web sites
4. Start the conversation with existing & potential customers that Rightmove prices are forcing the industry to have a re-think about membership and whether it provides enough value-for-money. Stress that savings from leaving RM would enable your business to expand its marketing and improve service to its clients. Back it up by confirming that 100s of branches are leaving every month, that you expect this figure to increase and that you are preparing for the day you say goodbye.
5. If you share property details on social media, use links to your own website not to the portals
6. Upload your content to your own website first. Upload to the portals (if you must) a couple or a few days later.
7. Ensure you promote YOUR website FIRST, don’t give any portal traffic
8. Stress that people register their details with YOU rather than the portals. Remind them that property does sell ‘off market’ or without the need for a portal upload.
9. Make your feelings known to Rightmove. OK, they’ll probably ignore them but you never know.
10. Finally, put the action plan together for when you finally give Rightmove the heave-ho. Remember they thrive on your fear of leaving, there is life after Rightmove.
11. Don’t moan on industry forums about Rightmove fees if you’re not prepared to carry out any of the points above.
TAKE BACK CONTROL TODAY
Nice manifesto…. But you don’t own an agency (have you ever?) so perhaps you are not the best person to lecture people on this issue!
Lecture, lol!
Massive round of applause for ripping agents off to the core!!
This is just rubbing our noses in it!
My personal thanks to Robyn for pricing me out and now saving £000’s per year. Get real folks, this is your money. Negotiate or leave
Rupert Hargreaves said.
Instead, all Rightmove does is sit back and collect fees from sellers.
Does he mean sit back and collect fees from agents regardless of whether a property sells or not.
Robyn leaves with bulging biceps ….having turned that Rightmove Annual Subscriber vice with all her might!