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Agencies & People

Purplebricks share price hits four-year low after week of drops

The embattled hybrid agency's share price hit 89.5 at close of trading yesterday on the AIM stock market, its lowest price since January 2016.

Nigel Lewis

purplbricks

The Purplebricks share price has tanked to a four-year low of 89.5p, only marginally above its January 2016 rock bottom of 74p.

Its share price has been on a downward trajectory since January this year when it peaked at £1.30p, but this began accelerating and since February 26th it has plummeted from £1.06 to its current price of 89.5p at close of play yesterday.

This drop can in part be attributed to the overall drop in the London Stock Exchange as investors, faced with the threat to business caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, have dumped riskier shares.

But equally, speculation about the company’s pricing model and finances, and some bad PR, have not helped.

As The Negotiator reported on February 21st, the company’s CEO Vic Darvey responded to analysis from industry consultant Andrew Stanton that suggested it could eventually run out of cash by saying its UK and Canadian businesses were profitable ‘at an EBITDA level’.

And yesterday The Daily Telegraph published a story that Purplebricks had banked some £18 million in fees from listings that it had not sold, claiming that it withdrew 21,380 listings in 2019 ‘as market jitters forced many buyers and sellers to stay put’, its reporter Vinjeru Mkandawire claimed.

Also, claims by many hybrid agency bosses, including Vic Darvey, that the online estate agency sector will eventually take 10% of the overall market have been frustrated by recently-published data from The Advisory, which shows it is stuck at around 4.6% of the overall market, based on Rightmove listings.

March 3, 2020

2 comments

  1. £18m in “commisery” for those that got nothing; how ironic.

  2. If you look at the 5-year share price chart of Purplebricks, it resembles a Purple Dinosaur in profile. Very apt. Its starting price at 95.5p the tail of the Stegosaurus goes up to some big spikes in 2017, and now it’s head in March 2020 at 85p resembles very much the head of a giant beast in pain.

    Yes online agents sell property, but should they keep fee from vendors who do not get a sale. They listed over 60,000 properties in the UK last year, a big achievement, they also saw 21,380 withdrawals in the same year, so 33%. Purplebricks maintain they exchange on 81% of their properties listed, this may or may not be true, but hard to achieve with these figures in plain sight.

    The big story is not the 18M of fee banked and kept in 2019 by Purplebricks, but what about the millions in previous years, yes you can argue buyer or vendor be aware, but maybe the warning by Purplebricks you may lose all your fee and get no sale needs to be crystal clear.

    Also with all this ‘extra’ cash why five years in has the company never made a penny of profit up, certainly not up to October 2019, their last interim accounts, maybe April will show a different picture – maybe the Purple Dinosaur will be smiling by then – the jury is very much out.

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