Rightmove Share Discussion Threads

[stantini] 26/9/2024 21:57

Is Rightmove another wounded digital dinosaur?

Can you further monetise Rightmove without alienating your agent clients?

Rightmove faces the same existential problem that all portals face, they are a digital advertising billboard, but the second a portal wants to maximise its profits and offer property services it robs its clients of revenue. For example, agents are losing the first bite of the cherry when new applicants register for financial services via a portal upstream of being passed to an agent who listed inventory to capture that new sales lead, and all of the rich data that portals gain is being sold off through the backdoor with none of the revenue going back in the fiscal hopper to the client agents.

On one level the data rich playground of Rightmove and all portals could go full throttle, but the more they encroach and offer agency services, the more they alienate and choke off the income of their clients. Rightmove’s biggest problem is that it charges far too much for far to little, in comparison Zoopla and OTM charge far too little given the level of ‘new’ services being rolled out.

To my mind realestate is speeding up so quickly, playing out across a background of digital transformation that the tech savvy and hungry client will soon be ‘doing’ property operations themselves aided by technology, the last refuge for estate agents is that they hold the prize – the inventory – the property asset that the buyers and tenants need, without this would the public interact with agents given the slowness of service in a digital age – unlikely – and the moment the public can do property themselves, self list and self sell and let, well that glittering inventory no longer needs to be listed on property portals owned by the Murdoch family.

The evolution of agency marches hand in hand with the tech led fourth industrial revolution that is touching all of our lives, it may be dystopian and shaped by a handful of people, but it is coming, ready or not.

Have you ever wondered why Rightmove has failed to change its UX in any significant way? For millions of people who search for property they are using the same outdated filters that belong to 20 years ago, price, bedrooms, postcode, yet when the modern generation digitally graze for other goods and services on other commercial sites, these modern digital purveyors race towards the needs of their potential client, upselling and seeming to guess every want and need of a paying client.

Rightmove has not re-invented itself, and its perceived arrogance – remember the ‘Say no to Rightmove’ movement that gained huge traction in a few days back in 2020, was the first warning that Rightmove was out of step, and needed to stop buying back its shares and paying large dividends, and instead get back to some R&D. Innovation that adds value to the offering rather than charging more for the same should have been the c-suite strategy.

Whichever way the present REA group possible acquisition ends up, in many ways Rightmove has like Countrywide PLC before its assets were bought by the Connells group, become a ‘wounded dinosaur who failed to digitally transform its operations.’

Countrywide PLC was of course a huge multi-dimensional property services company, but it ran a lumbering analogue business, thinking itself to be a property business, rather than a data and digital company. Ironically, Rightmove is one of the very first proptechs (propterty technology) behemoths, so its DNA is very much data, but in a quarter of a century it is now finds itself set in digital aspic, unable to move quickly, and when the CoStar Group meteorite hit, it was counting its 70% profits rather than building an effective moat to stop opportunists like the Murdoch family. (3rd Sept)

[growthpotential] 25/9/2024 21:18

Already lost out on this hideous HL buyout, I'm called RMV are rejecting this, so we should!

[saltaire111] 25/9/2024 06:42

The board is really digging its heels in.

They must be well short of the internal valuation.

Looks dead in the water.

[panache1] 23/9/2024 10:59

And that's not fun. Rightmove really should engage at this level and start negotiating. The share price has been languishing of late and it's only worth what someone is prepared to pay of what's it's share price is.

[saltaire111] 23/9/2024 07:03

Market looks as if it doesn’t think this is gonna happen.

Salty.

[saltaire111] 23/9/2024 06:42

Up to £7.70 now. Getting closer. £8.00 should do it?

Salty.

[sos100] 23/9/2024 06:24

they want this!

[timmy40] 21/9/2024 23:41

Latest offer still feels too low, more like £8 needed

[panache1] 21/9/2024 09:12

Sorry - meant yesterday, not this morning

[panache1] 21/9/2024 09:10

Similar article in the FT this morning

[saltaire111] 11/9/2024 06:41

They have low balled it! £7.00 - cheeky sods. The board has given it short shrift and told them to stuff it.

[saltaire111] 02/9/2024 17:24

I should imagine their first bid will be c £7.50. They’ll low-ball it with a view to coming back at about eight quid.

[weemonkey] 02/9/2024 10:53

"Peel Hunt analysts said Rightmove's trading price to earnings ratio made it one of the cheapest publicly listed classified groups in Europe."

Yup..

[undervaluedassets] 02/9/2024 10:40

Average PER for this stock over the last 10 years has been 30

That would give us a price of 784p

Not sure that the market has got this right at all at 680p.. It is not enough.

Esp as RMV has 84% of the UK search property market

Frankly I hope the bid goes away.

[undervaluedassets] 02/9/2024 09:22

The undervaluation here has been crazy for ages.

Was always going to get taken out.

The Aussie purchaser will get the value and the UK investor will get a few pieces of silver.

You really don't want your best stocks to be taken over.

[helpaargh] 02/9/2024 08:16

At last some action. I've been patient for long enough. Let there be a bidding war please.

[undervaluedassets] 02/9/2024 07:31

the purchaser has a pe in the the 50's

RMV pe 21.

they know they are picking up growth on the cheap

[undervaluedassets] 02/9/2024 07:25

er operating margin is nearer 70% actually

[weemonkey] 02/9/2024 07:20

Agreed. RMV has been unloved/underappreciated for nearly 4 years now.

Of course they are going to get snapped up.

Have the largest moat in the uk and operating margins of near 50%.

the website is used to the exclusion of every other when looking for a house

[saltaire111] 02/9/2024 07:19

Who else might join the bidding?

Can’t see the likes of Axel Springer DMGT letting this go on the cheap.