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Agencies & People

Countrywide raises £37.7 million from “over-subscribed” share placement

Money will be used to help fund expansion of "rewarding" digital hybrid roll-out.

Nigel Lewis

countrywideCountrywide has raised a further £37.8 million pounds from the City to fund the roll out of its fast-expanding digital hybrid platform and network.

Some 21.5 million shares were placed for sale on London’s stock exchange today with the help of Barclays and Jefferies International, and advised by legal firm Slaughter and May.

On Thursday the ‘placement’ was revealed at a share price of £1.75 each and Countrywide says it was over-subscribed as many of the company’s big institutional backers swung behind CEO Alison Platt’s plan to extricate the company from its current woes.

The shares represented just under 10% of the company’s total share capital.

The money that Countrywide is hoping raise from the share placement is, CEO Alison Platt told investors last week, to enable her to invest in the company and particularly its digital roll out without having to borrow any more money.

Share price slide

But despite Alison’s upbeat presentation, the placing did not stop the current slide in Countywide’s share price, which is currently trading at approximately 5p less than the placing price.

Overall, Countrywide shares have not been doing well and are currently trading for 52% less than they were listed a year ago.

During her presentation to City investors CEO Alison Platt (pictured) called the company’s digital rollout as one of the “most rewarding things that she had seen during 2016,” she said.

alison platt countrywide“We put our toe in water in digital in June of last year and the results were significantly better than we might have hoped, and not wanting to believe that was a quirk of the pilot and the markets we’d chosen to test in, we rolled out some tactical brands and the results were the same, so we’ve continued apace.

“What this has demonstrated for us is that there is a large opportunity for growth here.”

March 13, 2017

One comment

  1. We would really like to hear from agents about their views on whether – or not – major brands such as Countrywide are dumming-down the service levels to become all things to everyone.

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