Rightmove Plc is a British company that operates in the residential and commercial properties industry. It is one of the foremost property websites and real estate portals in the United Kingdom, and offers its services through rightmove.co.uk.
The company is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. As of May, 2017, the company was valued at $4.6 billion, and as of 2016, it had an operating income of £161.6 million, a revenue of £220 million, and a net income of £129.5 million.
The internet and real estate company was founded in the year 2000 and is led by Scott Forbes who serves in the capacity of Chairman and Mark McKittrick who is the company’s Chief Executive Officer. The company has its headquarters in London, UK, and had a work force numbering a total of 469 as of 2016.
The company provides services for lettings agents, new homes developers, estate agents, and overseas homes agents who pay in order to have properties displayed on the Rightmove website. This allows those looking for homes to find details on various properties across the country on the website.
Users are able to find an agent’s property when they search for the area in which the property is located. Rightmove prevents persons who are selling property directly without the use of an agent from advertising properties on the site. The company releases a House Price Index on a monthly basis, which captures the trends in the asking prices of properties across England and Wales.
Rightmove has segmented its operations into three: New Homes, Agency, and Other.
The New Homes segment is focused on providing housing associations and new home developers with a platform to advertise property on the company’s website.
The Agency segment is focused on providing advertisement opportunities for customers looking to let or resell properties.
The Other segment consists of services not related to advertising of properties, including services such as business and information and an automated valuation model. These are in addition to providing advertising opportunities for overseas home agents.
Rightmove.co.uk was launched in 2000 as a joint venture between some of the UK’s most notable real estate chains: Royal and Sun Alliance, Halifax, Connells, and Countrywide, with the name Righmove.co.uk Limited. The Rightmove website was originally free to list and charges were not introduced until January 2002.
The company extended its services to property developers in 2002 when it launched its New Homes services for developers and became the first property website to start receiving payment for advertising properties for sale. In the same year, the company published its first House Price Index.
Rightmove included services for lettings agents in 2004 and started charging for advertising property to let in 2005. The company became Rightmove Plc on 15 March, 2006 when it was first listed on the London Stock Exchange at a price of £3.35 per share. Still in 2006, the company became a member of the FTSE 250.
In 2007, Rightmove acquired 67% of Holiday Lettings Limited, and in the same year, the company introduced their property advertising products which permitted their homes developers and agents to differentiate their properties on site. In May 2008, one of the founding investors, HBOS, sold its stake in Rightmove. In the same year, Rightmove reached a figure of over 5 billion yearly page impressions and displayed more than 1 million properties details from around the UK.
2009 saw the company introduce its first mobile app, and today, nearly a third of their searches are performed on mobile devices. In 2010, the company sold its 67% stake in Holiday Lettings Limited for £20.9 million, and returned over £140 million to its shareholders through share buy backs and dividends.
In 2011, Rightmove attained a market share of 84% of the four leading property websites in the UK judging by page views, and the company’s underlying operating profit margin exceeded 70 percent. In 2012, the company’s revenues exceeded £100 million and reached 11 billion page impressions per annum.
Scott Forbes occupies the position of Chairman and was appointed to the board on 13 July, 2005. Before he joined Rightmove, he had spent 15 years at Cendant Corporation, a global provider of residential property services, where he served in the capacity of Group Managing Director for a time. He was Director at the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, NetJets Management Ltd, until October 2009 when he left and joined Orbits Worldwide as Chairman until he left in September 2015.
He is currently a Non-Executive Director at Travelport, and Chairman at Ascential Plc, Innasol Group Ltd, and Bridge Capital Advisors LLP.
Peter Brooks-Johnson is the Chief Executive Officer at Rightmove and was appointed to the board on 10 January, 2011. Peter became the CEO of Rightmove in April 2013, and prior to that he was the company’s Managing Director, a role he had taken on since 2011. While he joined Rightmove in 2006, he served as head of the Agency business between 2008 and 2011.
Before Peter joined the company, he had worked with The Berkeley Partnership as a management consultant between 2000 and 2005. Before The Berkeley Partnership, he was a consultant at Andersen Consulting and Manager at Accenture between 1995 and 2000. He graduated from Newcastle University with a degree in Microelectronics.
Robyn Perriss is Finance Director at Rightmove and was appointed to the company’s board on 30 April,2013. When Robyn joined the company in 2007, she was serving in the capacity of Financial Controller and was in charge of daily financial operations. She was handed the role of Company Secretary in April 2012 and remained so until July 2014. In April 2013, she joined the Board as Finance Director. Before Robyn joined Rightmove, she worked at online media business, Auto Trader, where she was Group Financial Controller. During her time in South Africa, she qualified as a chartered accountant with KPMG.
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