Zoopla Reports Profitable Turnaround After Two Years of Losses

The UK number two real estate portal Zoopla has reported a profit of circa £18.8 million in 2023 after two years of sustained losses.

Zoopla lost £17.8 million in 2021 and £6.2 million in 2022, but new accounts show a healthy turnaround last year.

Revenues increased from £87.3 million in 2022 to £90.4 million in 2023.

Sam Fletcher, CFO at Zoopla parent company Houseful, commented:

"The profit increase was driven primarily by a number of cost restructuring programmes enacted in both 2022 and 2023 and aimed at driving greater levels of profitability.

"Revenue increased by 3.6% due to a recovery in the new homes market, growth in website advertising partnerships and the end of free of charge contracts offered during the Covid-19 pandemic."

However, accounts submitted to Companies House showed that Zoopla's employee numbers fell from 483 to 388 in the past 12 months—circa 100 job losses.

A statement from the board said:

"The directors believe that Zoopla is a sustainable business that can build on its position as the UK’s most comprehensive property website, helping consumers research the market and find their next home by combining hundreds of thousands of property listings with market data and local information."

Zoopla is the best-known brand under the parent company's Houseful suite of brands and tools across the Homes (Zoopla, Mojo Mortgages, and Prime Location), Software (Alto, Jupix, and Yourkeys), and Data and Risk segments (Hometrack and Calcasa) in the UK's real estate industry.

The release of updated accounts is timely for Zoopla, which faces a sandwich of pressure from Rightmove (currently under bid by Australia's REA Group) from above and OnTheMarket (owned by American real estate giant CoStar Group) from below.

Zoopla was purchased by US private equity firm Silver Lake Partners in 2018 for circa $2.2 billion before Zoopla's Property Division was rebranded as Houseful in 2023.

Speculation has questioned that Silver Lake would have to cut its losses if it wanted to divest from Zoopla and escape the maelstrom in the UK, where Rightmove poses an almost-insurmountable market leadership position, while CoStar CEO Andy Florance has set out his stall as wanting to provide "wake up calls" to the entirety of the European real estate marketplace industry as a whole.

Watch the "Are Number Two Portals Zoopla, Realtor.com and Domain About to Lose Their Places?" episode of the PPW podcast below: