Ian Springett
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket shares finally exceed original AIM launch share price
If you’re an agent who holds OnTheMarket shares then it may be time to celebrate. The company’s share price has finally recovered and today exceeded its original offer price of £1.63p from ten days ago. Trading in OnTheMarket shares peaked at £1.70p late this afternoon, the highest the share price has reached to date. At launch the share price dropped to a low of £1.40p but has since been climbing slowly to today’s high, helped by an upbeat announcement on Friday that included details of its strategy to both target smaller agents and tie-in larger agent groups to long-term deals. “The more agents who join now, the more we believe all agents and property-seekers will benefit in terms of the increased property stock at OnTheMarket.com,” CEO Ian Springett said in Friday’s statement. “We are focused on reaching out to agent firms across the country which can see the disruptive appeal of our proposition of sustainable fair pricing from an agent-backed portal.” Excited Springett is currently refusing all interview requests, but has been busy doing the rounds at agent gatherings, including at agent Jackson-Stops’ annual conference, at which he said he was “excited by progress”. During today’s session on AIM nearly…
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OnTheMarket targets independent agents as it launches war with ZPG
OnTheMarket has come out fighting five days after its stock market flotation, telling its new City backers that the company is to target independent agents and has already signed up 81, with more in the pipeline. “The estate agent sector is highly local in character and early indications are that we are on track in terms of creating local momentum in the marketplace up and down the UK,” says Ian Springett, CEO of OTM. “The core proposition of the business remains the creation of an agent-backed, full-scale property portal to disrupt what is otherwise a duopoly of Rightmove and Zoopla by offering a premier search experience to consumers whilst charging sustainably fair prices to agents.” But the portal also says it is targeting larger estate agency groups and has already to signed up its first a to five-year deal since launching on the AIM stock market. This is the 18-branch agency Butters John Bee which, as well as signing up to OTM, has withdrawn its listings from ZPG’s portals. The agency, which has branches across Shropshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire and the West Midlands, was bought by the SpicerHaart group in September last year. Butters John Bee is essentially now aligning itself…
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OnTheMarket shares drop by 14% following last week’s AIM launch
Shares in the property industry’s newest public limited company OnTheMarket have dropped by nearly 15% since it floated on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) on Friday morning, including an almost 6% fall today. The share price for the company, which trades as OTMP on the junior stock market, has tumbled by 24p from its initial offer price of £1.63p a share to £1.39p (at the time of writing) cutting the company’s market capitalisation from an initial £100m to £89.59 million, according to Bloomberg. The Financial Times said the portal’s share launch, which offers investors a minority stake in the company, had ‘failed to shine’. These are nerve-wracking times for many of the portal’s 2,700 agent members, who last year voted overwhelmingly to trade in their membership for shares which they are hoping, once their lock-in period ends, they will be able to sell. This is equally true for the company’s key directors including co-founder and CEO Ian Springett (pictured, left). He now holds approximately 90,000 shares in the new PLC allocated to him at entry to AIM, plus nearly three and a half million share options, on top of his £170,000 salary. Several high-profile investors have taken substantial stakes in…
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OnTheMarket shares begin trading at £1.63p, plummets to £1.48p
Shares in OnTheMarket began trading on London’s AIM stock market today kicking off at £1.63p, valuing the company at £100 million, and quickly rising by 2p to £1.65 before dropping to £1.48p by end of trading on Friday. The OnThemarket shares issue, which it says has raised £30m out of a hoped-for £50m to finance its battle for market share with Rightmove and ZPG, is the conclusion of a long and tortuous road for CEO Ian Springett’s ambitious portal project. It launched in January 2015 two years after founding members Knight Frank, Savills, Strutt & Parker and Chestertons first convened to form parent company Agents’ Mutual Ltd. OnTheMarket.com positioned itself as a mutual organisation of agent members, but introduced a controversial ‘one other portal’ rules that made agents choose between either Rightmove or Zoopla as their ‘other portal’. Last year agent Gascoigne Halman took OnTheMarket to court, claiming the ‘one other portal’ rule was anti-competitive, but lost the case. This cleared the way for OnTheMarket to demutualise, which took place following a vote of its 2,700 agent members late last year. Former members of the mutual organisation were allocated share options based on their size of listing and length of…
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OnTheMarket flotation confirmed alongside sweeteners for agents to sign long-term deals
The long-awaited OnTheMarket flotation on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) is to proceed, it has been confirmed by parent organisation Agents’ Mutual. It is now four months since the vote to demutualise Agents Mutual which was to be followed by the creation of a new company OnTheMarket plc prior to an Initial Public Offering (IPO) on AIM. Agents Mutual has yet to announce the new company or IPO, but has revealed that it will introduce “appropriate incentives” to persuade new members to commit to five-year deals with OTM. This will include giving share options to “selected” agents joining the portal if they commit to long-term listings agreement. OnTheMarket flotation But agents who receive equity in OTM following the flotation are to be prevented from cashing in their shares too soon to “align their interests as shareholders with the success of the Group”. OTM has already begun the process of securing five-year deals in return for promises of shares in the company including, most recently, deals announced with Arun Estates, Chancellors and Hunters. But, as previously announced, the £50m it hopes to raise from the City will be spent on marketing and PR to drive traffic to the site and to…
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Hunters’ five-year OnTheMarket deal brings online marketing back to its HQ
The recent deal by stock market-listed estate agency Hunters Property Group to list all its franchisees properties via OnTheMarket.com (OTM) significantly changes the way its franchisees choose how to market their listings, it has been revealed. Until now it is believed that franchised branches were free to choose which portal they list their properties on and, at different times, have signed up to he OTM and either listed with Zoopla or Rightmove. But now that the ‘one other portal’ rule is dead in the water following the recent decision to demutualise OTM’s parent company Agents Mutual and float the portal on the AIM stock market, Hunters has taken the unilateral decision to move all of its franchisees on to OnTheMarket.com. A spokesperson for Hunters, said: “We can’t comment on the extent of the deal yet but we see it as a positive step for the whole network, which will provide the best solution in terms of creating exposure for our properties.” Portal choice Only a handful of Hunters’ franchisees list with Rightmove while 180 list with Zoopla out of its’ total network of more than 200 branches. “Some of the Hunters franchised offices have joined OnTheMarket on an individual basis…
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Agent group Chancellors signs with OTM, but on condition IPO goes ahead
One of the UK’s leading agent groups, South of England, London and Wales based Chancellors has signed up its 50 branches and three brands to five years with OnTheMarket.com. But in an unusual move, Bracknell-based Chancellors has made its listing agreement with the portal conditional upon OnTheMarket successfully floating on the stock market. Assuming that goes ahead, Chancellors Group has agreed to advertise all of its UK residential sales and lettings properties at OnTheMarket.com and promote it via its branch and digital advertising activities. The agreement is a change of mind for Chancellors, which two years ago published a blog outlining how it did not back OnTheMarket and questioning the need for a ‘third portal’. The blog by Robert Scott-Lee, Group Managing Director at Chancellors (pictured), said in his blog: “How successful OnTheMarket.com will be in the long term remains to be seen, but it’s all down to the volume of traffic it is able to achieve. “If it does perform well, I hope to one day sign on the dotted line with them, but we will act in the best interests of our clients, and for now, we feel that is not with OnTheMarket.com.” OnTheMarket claims today’s agreement, which…
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Arun Estates signs with OnTheMarket ahead of AIM flotation
OnTheMarket (OTM) has signed its first NEW significant agency group following its decision in August to float on the London Stock Exchange AIM market and demutualise. Arun Estates, which encompasses four agent brands and over 100 branches across the South East of England, has signed a five-year listing with the portal. Under the agreement, Arun Estates will advertise all its UK residential sales and letting properties on OnTheMarket.com, and has committed to “actively promote” the portal in its branches. Arun Estates’ best-known grand, Ward & Partners, already lists with both Rightmove and the ZPG portals. “It is a powerful boost to OnTheMarket that Arun Estates is committing to list its properties for five years at OnTheMarket.com,” says OTM Chief Executive Ian Springett (pictured, left) “Arun Estates is undoubtedly one of the leading, most successful agent groups in the regions where it operates and its support will substantially strengthen our position in the market.” Arun Estates, which includes Ward & Partners, Cubitt & West, Douglass Allen and Pittis (on the Isle of Wight), was born out of the sale by Prudential Insurance of its national estate agency business during the early 1980s. Arun Estates has also been busy on other fronts…
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High Court gives OnTheMarket.com flotation green light
The final hurdles that OnTheMarket.com faced in order to float on the London Stock Exchange have been cleared after the High Court of Justice Chancery Division (pictures, right) sanctioned the two key votes on demutualisation completed last week. The court approved the Members Scheme – which enables agents to turn their membership of Agents’ Mutual into shares, and the Loan Notes Scheme, which will see the Notes originally issued to the agents who helped fund the OTM start-up turned into equity. The court decision follows last Friday’s member vote, during which they voted overwhelmingly to convert their existing membership interests into shares, ushering in both a new company to replace Agents’ Mutual – OnTheMarket Ltd – plus the dropping of the ‘one other portal’ rule. “The High Court of Justice Chancery Division this morning sanctioned the Members Scheme and the three Loan Note Schemes which were overwhelmingly endorsed by our Members and Loan Noteholders at the Court Meetings on 6 September,” says Ian Springett, Chief Executive of OnTheMarket. We will now continue to the next stage of the process. OnTheMarket flotation The court decision clears the way for demutualisation, a process that will begin tomorrow before an Initial Public Offering (IPO)…
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OnTheMarket agents vote overwhelmingly to demutualise and float
OnTheMarket is to demutualise and float on the stock market following a vote by its agent members. It is also to drop its controversial ‘one other portal rule’ and will now attempt to raise £50m from City investors. Nearly 90% of agent members of the website’s operator Agents’ Mutual voted to convert their existing membership interests into shares in a new company called OnTheMarket Ltd. Agents’ Mutual says 70% of members voted in person at the meeting in London yesterday or by proxy. After the vote is approved by a court hearing early week the demutualisation will then proceed on 12th September, and following an initial IPO on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) it is expected that some £50m will be raised by offering investors a minority stake in the new business. Advertising campaign This will value OnTheMarket at between £200 and £250 million. The money raise is to be used to take on Rightmove and Zoopla with a huge national advertising campaign on TV, digital and print media as well as significant radio and billboard activity. “I am very pleased at such a resounding demonstration of broad Member support for our strategic proposals for the business,” says Ian Springett,…
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