Zoopla shares reached a 52-week high on Friday, peaking at 302p and finishing the day up 1.63% at 299.40p.
The prices compare with a 52-week low in January of 189.90p. The shares are 42.5% up on a year ago.
The new high came in the same week that a consensus forecast among 15 analysts advised that the company will outperform the market.
Last Friday was the day that challenger portal OnTheMarket updated its agents on membership growth to over 6,250 branches listing, with total support of over 7,000.
Analyst William Packer, of Exane BNP Paribas, issued a note saying that this implied healthy growth of around 850 branches joining OnTheMarket since November.
Packer went on: “Following recent newsflow – CMA letter and OTM legal issues – (and implied by the strong reaction of the Zoopla share price), many had doubted the momentum at OTM.”
He estimated that if OTM reaches its next target of 7,500 it will have similar inventory levels to Zoopla.
Going against the consensus, Packer gave Zoopla a neutral rating “with positive momentum at uSwitch offsetting challenges at the property portal business”.
He added: “We rate Rightmove outperform, well placed to benefit from the current competitive dislocation.”
Comments (6)
And bread is now available sliced!
OTM do talk a lot of rubbish sometimes. Signing up a few hundred branches for next to nothing, most of which no doubt, are so small that they wouldn’t normally advertise on RM to begin with. Pull the other one.
Zoopla:
23 Jan 2014 share price = 155
6 May 2016 share price = 299.4
That’s 93% up
Rightmove:
23 Jan 2014 share price = 2468
6 May 2016 share price = 3974
That’s 61% up
Just as well share price isn’t a reflection of customers now isn’t it.
What’s your point harry hood?
His point as a Z rep is he thinks they are doing well 😉