Rightmove PLC on Friday hailed ‘pricing actions’ as it praised the resilience of customers for its profit growth in 2022, and paid out a higher dividend to shareholders.
Shares in the Milton-Keynes based online real estate agency fell 2.4% to 550.20 pence each on Friday morning, as operating profit and revenue fell short of market expectations.
Rightmove said pretax profit grew 6.9% in 2022 to £241.3 million from £225.6 million a year prior. Operating profit rose 6.7% to £241.3 million from £226.1 million, underperforming against company-compiled consensus of £242.2 million by 0.4%.
Revenue climbed 9.1% to £332.6 million from £304.9 million, beating company-compiled consensus of £330.8 million by 0.5%. It fell 5.5% short however of a revenue expectation of £352.0 million by UBS analysts.
The company paid a final dividend of 5.2 pence per share for 2022, up 8.3% from 4.8p paid for 2021. This brings the total dividend to 8.5p, up 9.0% from 7.8p a year ago.
Outgoing Chief Executive Officer Peter Brooks-Johnson said: ‘The year’s changing housing market conditions demonstrated our customers’ resilience and ability to adapt and to continue to succeed. The softening from the Covid-induced frenetic market towards a more normal market earlier in the year was disrupted in the final few months by the unexpected rapid mortgage rate increases.
‘The strength of our results is a reminder of how effective and integral our new and existing products and services are in helping our customers in both faster and slower markets.’
2022’s results were the last set reported with Peter Brooks-Johnson as chief executive officer. He will be replaced by Johan Svanstrom from Monday.
Average revenue per advertiser, a key metric, grew 11% to £1,314 from £1,189, and beating company-compiled consensus of £1,300 by 1.1%. Rightmove said it was ‘not materially impacted by the property market cycle,’ as it noted increased confidence in average revenue per advertiser growth in 2023.
The company said 16.3 billion minutes were spent on its platform, down from 18.3 billion in 2022, as the UK housing market cooled off.
Mortgage lender Nationwide on Wednesday reported that UK house prices fell 1.1% annually in February, compared to a 1.1% rise in January.
On a monthly basis, prices fell 0.5% in February from January, slowing slightly from a 0.6% decline in January from December. It was the sixth consecutive monthly decline in UK house prices, however.
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