OnTheMarket Sees Revenue and ARPA Rise 32% As it Migrates Agents to Paying Contracts

British real estate portal OnTheMarket has released its official figures for the 12 months ending 31st of January 2022. Highlights of the company's year include:

• Revenue was up 32% at £30.4 million
• Profit after tax was down at £0.1 million mainly due to shareholder payments
• ARPA was up 32% to £188

Since floating on the London Stock Exchange in 2018, the majority agent-owned OnTheMarket has been on a mission to convert the goodwill of agents listing on its portal for free into sustainable subscription revenue.

The latest results represent confirmation of the trading update released at the end of February and clearly show that the company is making progress towards that goal under the stewardship of CEO Jason Tebb who said of his company's performance:

"I am delighted to be reporting a strong set of results which show that our strategy is working. Having listened and engaged with thousands of agents we are more convinced than ever in our strategy of building a differentiated, tech-enabled property business.

With our strong performance and momentum in the business the future remains very exciting for OnTheMarket. We are continuing to deliver increased value to our customers and serious property seekers, with innovative new products and a refreshed brand.

I would like to thank the OnTheMarket team for their hard work and commitment to delivering for all of our stakeholders."

Although annual post-tax profit was down significantly on account of shareholder payouts, operating profit was up 13% at £2.7m. Despite completing the acquisition of rental platform company Glanty over the period, OnTheMarket retained a cash balance of £8.4m.

OnTheMarkets positive results were also reflected in its operational metrics with gains in average revenue per agent (ARPA) as well as in traffic which rose 6%. Although the portal's total number of advertisers rose 4.8% to 13,296, the gains were mostly from new house builders with the number of ordinary agent branches listing actually decreasing by 5% to 11,171 as the company migrates agents to paid packages.

Going forward, the portal's strategy is to persuade agents to list their properties on OnTheMarket before listing on rivals Rightmove and Zoopla while continuing the successful PR outreach to British agents.

In an outlook statement, the company said it wants to make sure that "all serious property seekers consider OnTheMarket an essential tool in their property journey, before during and after they have moved home".