Rightmove has increased its annual average advertising revenue growth forecast in a trading update issued this morning, as easing mortgage costs against an encouraging economic backdrop boosted activity in the housing market.
The average revenue per advertiser (ARPA) growth outlook uplift reflects product uptake across both estate agent and housebuilders listing on the website, Rightmove said.
The UK housing market has started to see early signs of sales recovery in recent months, bolstered by the Bank of England’s August and November rate cuts.
In September, Rupert Murdoch’s REA Group ended its £6.1bn takeover pursuit of Rightmove, following a fourth bid rejection by the portal.
The company, which charges estate agents and homebuilders a fee to list their properties on its website, said it expects an ARPA growth of between £85 and £95, abve its previous forecast of £75-£85.
It reaffirmed its annual adjusted operating margin and revenue forecast.
Rightmove issued the following statement:
Looking ahead with confidence
Rightmove plc, the UK’s number one property portal, provides the following update on trading for the period from 1 July 2024. Unless otherwise stated, figures relate to the four-month period ending 31 October 2024.
Market update
Looking across the segments that we serve, we see greater optimism among our partners looking into 2025 than at this time last year.
Our latest leading property market data shows a continuation of the trends indicated at our interim results on 26 July 2024. House price growth remains positive, albeit subdued, and mortgage rates are stable with a favourable outlook for further potential bank rate cuts.
Property transaction flow is improving, supporting business growth for our Estate Agency partners. Rental price growth continues to moderate with an average enquiries per available property of 15.
Our New Homes developer partners are encouraged by the government policy support that has been announced, although new build activity remains softer than the prior year.
Guidance update
We are in line to meet market expectations for revenue and adjusted underlying operating profit for the year, and are tightening our 2024 guidance given at the interim results in July as follows:
+ Revenue of approximately £390m (within our previous guidance of 7-9% growth)
+ Reiterate guidance of adjusted underlying operating margin of 70%. This will be before one-off costs of approximately £10m
+ Membership numbers are expected to grow by around +1% on 2023 (within our previous guidance of up to +2%), reflecting a slower-than-expected recovery in New Homes developments
+ Average Revenue Per Advertiser (ARPA) growth of +£85-£95 on 2023’s £1,431, higher than our previous guidance of +£75-£85, reflecting the successful sales and migration to the Optimiser Edge top-end package for Estate Agents, as well as product uptake across both Estate Agent and New Homes partners.
We expect to see a modest acceleration in revenue growth in 2025 from the full-year impact of Optimiser Edge uptake, product-led growth across our Core business, and continued progress within our Strategic Growth Areas of Commercial Property, Mortgages and Rental Services.
Current trading and outlook: looking ahead with confidence
Reinforcing our network effect by delivering consumer and partner value
Rightmove remains the place to which consumers turn first and return most – representing over 80% of all consumer time spent on UK property portals. Our cross-channel consumer marketing is focused on ensuring that we are front of mind for UK home-movers: in H2, this has included our sponsorship of `The Voice’ on ITV1 and ITVX which reached over 14 million people, and the next phase of our brand campaign across social, video, out-of-home and Rightmove platforms which is expected to reach 95% of UK adults.
We also increased our social media presence with an 89% increase in engagement during the period. We continue to innovate at scale and pace to drive engagement with our platform: within our Affordability product suite we launched the Renovation Calculator for consumers, with 20% of users tracking a property since launch adding a renovation.
Lead generation remains strong, with 20% more leads sent to our resale and dual partners in the period. This delivers superior outcomes to our partners, with Rightmove providing 73% of sales outcomes and 85% of lettings outcomes in 2024 year-to-date.
Divisional update and outlook
Within our core business, we have successfully executed on Rightmove’s longstanding approach to contract renewals, which are now complete for the year and continue to deliver product-led ARPA growth.
In Estate Agency, we expect growth in 2025 to be supported by the continued migration from Optimiser 2020 to Optimiser Edge, as well as increased product uptake and contract renewals. We began to migrate partners to Optimiser Edge in August, and now have over 3,000 branches on this top package. We expect the migration to be materially complete within the next 12 months
Within New Homes, we are now starting to see slightly more developments on site and expect ongoing growth during 2025. ARPA remains strong as developers continue to turn to our products for their marketing needs.
Our Strategic Growth Areas of Mortgages, Commercial Property, and Rental Services continue to perform in line with our expectations.
Within Mortgages, we have delivered >150% more leads to our lender and broker partners year-on-year, and recently launched a remortgage product within Track a Property, supporting the introduction of further leads to our broker partners. Our Commercial Real Estate team relaunched the site in September, with a new Commercial landing page and lead-generating product, as well as media and partner outreach, all aimed at further strengthening our leading position.
Within Rental Services, referencing volumes continue to grow and are up 13% year-on-year. Our digital end-to-end rental solution for agents and landlords, Lead to Keys, has attracted over 140 new partners and over 275 existing Rightmove partners which means we are on track to hit our subscription targets for 2024.
Johan Svanstrom, CEO of Rightmove, said: “This has been another period of strong progress for Rightmove, and it’s pleasing to see our product development and sales delivery generating increased uptake from consumers and partners. As a result, we remain confident in achieving meaningful strategic and financial growth in 2024.
“We see continued momentum building product depth across our platform – driving revenue growth in the core business and within our strategic growth areas.
“We are excited to be the place consumers turn to first and return to most when looking to buy, sell or rent a property in the UK. We see a long runway of opportunities, leveraging our superior platform and data scale to generate increased value for all stakeholders.”
