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Yopa has enough cash to last another 12 months, it reveals

Latest accounts for 2018 show a 66% increase in losses to £30.4 million despite increase in number and value of instructions.

Nigel Lewis

yopa

Savills-backed hybrid estate agency Yopa has reported an operating loss of £30.4 million during 2018, an increase of 66%. It has also revealed that it has enough cash in the bank to keep going for another 12 months.

The company has blamed its rise in losses partly on the launch of its ‘No Sale, No Fee’ service in addition to its ‘Pay Now’ option. This has both reduced and deferred its expected turnover levels.

Yopa has also spent huge sums on expanding its customers service operation including a new contact centre in Watford and hiring more talent from the estate agency industry, all of which has nearly doubled its wage bill to £9.88 million.

Its customer service headcount increased from 38 during 2017 to 136 last year and its London head office also swelled from 59 to 64 staff.

The company’s accounts were drawn up by KPMG and reveal that Yopa has also signed up to both financial services and conveyancing partnerships to increase its product offering and drive more revenue in the future.

Growing instructions

Despite its huge losses, the underlying business is growing. Revenue increased by 60% year-on-year to £6.8 million and its gross profit, before its £33 million overheads, increased 32% to £2.7 million.

Yopa also claims it would be doing better if it weren’t for Brexit.

“Given the political and economic uncertainty around Brexit and the recent appointment of a new prime minister there is a significant level of uncertainty in the market which has seen a year-on-year decline in housing market transactions,” it says.

“However, there remains sufficient opportunity for the business to grow and capture market share give its value proposition.”

In August Yopa was given another £20 million by investors including its biggest stakeholder, Savills.

October 15, 2019

2 comments

  1. So far YOPA has burn through in excess of 65M, nearly £50M of cash in the last 24-months. LSL decided not to chip into the 16M that was provided by other backers including the daily mail and Savills (Savills? Why did they get involved in this project – vanity or insanity).

    Anyway the point is, just as Purplebricks found, as revenue increases, so too does the cost base. Though never making a penny profit, if revenue increases, so does the size of the operation. As Purplebricks showed, when it was turning over £54M its losses were comparatively small, when revenue grew to £92M – well the losses went skyward.

    The difference between YOPA is that at 6.8M turnover, having used 65M to produce this, well the model is just not sustainable. Imagine going to the city or a bank and saying I have a great idea, lend me £65M and in five years I will grow a revenue stream of 10% of that figure, and make a profit of minus £30M.

    With a traditional model of agency, had they used the 65M on a number of cold start offices, with only 118k a branch invested, then within 24 months you would be at break even, eg, all capital spent and cash flow injected would be returned, and they could have been looking forward to trading at 18% to 22% gross profit per branch.

    But traditional agency 93% of the sector, is not sexy, no much better everything is online. The reality and IKEA which has seen growth year on year for over 7-decades knows, technology does not replace the interaction between the customer and the company. Technology is an important tool, but it is the face to face interplay that pushes business along.

    I am sure in some sectors technology will replace humans, but in the world of sales, personal service and interaction is still king.

    Maybe YOPA need to open a few brick and mortar branches and talk to their customers and understand their needs, rather than dreaming up the next best 2020 CRM.

  2. I believe it’s referred to as a death by a thousand cuts. The writing is on the wall and always has been for this type of business.

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