Foxtons share price rises stall after mixed financial results
The London-based agency has seen its share price fall around 2% this week after months of increases but senior team say growth in and outside London will continue.
Foxtons’ share price has stalled after mixed financial results were announced this week.
The London agency has seen its shares dip by around 2% after full-year results were revealed on Tuesday.
A stutter in Foxtons’ shares is out of kilter with the trend during the last few months.
Shares jump
Recently, The Neg reported Foxtons had seen its shares jump more than 50% in six months.
And the share price jumped to 58p from 37p last August, with a 5% increase in the previous month alone.
Adjusted figure
This week, CEO Guy Gittins and CFO Chris Hough were keen to stress to The Neg that while the company’s profit before tax was down 34% to £7.9 million, the adjusted figure was up 2%,
They said profit before tax was down after charging £4.5m of ‘adjusted items’ mainly due to the costs of integrating Ludlow Thompson and “branch network consolidation”.
They also said that so far this year the transaction figures looked promising.
Rapid acquisitions
Gittins revealed that Foxtons’ long-term target was to become a national agency covering the whole of the UK, with 500-600 offices.
The Foxtons network is currently made up of over 50 offices, almost entirely in the Greater London area.
Achieving £25-£30 million of operating profit with “rapid acquisitions” was the immediate aim, he said.
Expansion plans
And there was still plenty of scope for growth within the M25, he said. “We will always look at high volume, high value commuter belt locations.”
The target though is to one day expand outside of London: “500-600 offices up and down the UK would be transformational, but that’s a long, long-term opportunity,” he explained.
