Zoopla Upbeat About Seller Lead Prospects Despite Revenue and Profit Decline in 2024

The British portal Zoopla has revealed the numbers behind its business for the calendar year 2024. Despite declines in both revenue and profit, the company maintains that the results reflect "resilient performance" and "a healthy operating margin." Highlights of the company's performance fot the period include:

• Revenue was £84.2m, down 7% compared to 2023
• Operating margin was stable at 19% (20% in 2023)
• Operating profit for the period was £15.7m (£18.5m in 2023)
• The company recorded a pre-tax loss of £5.8m, attributed to a one-off writedown of the Yourkeys platform

Recently appointed Zoopla CEO, Paul Whitehead, commented:

“2024 was a year of transformation for Zoopla. Despite challenging market conditions, the Company delivered strong margins, streamlined operations, and refocused the business for growth. Now, with a clear strategic direction and a dedicated leadership team, Zoopla is delivering greater value for our customers."

“I’m pleased with the strong momentum we are building in 2025. We are winning new customers and growing our active high-intent homeowners, which is a clear signal that our strategy is working. We are unlocking new consumer audiences and lead quality is improving, which drives greater ROI for our customers and ultimately helps more people win at moving home.”

Zoopla was taken private when it was bought for £2.2 billion by the American private equity firm Silverlake in 2018. However, like all registered limited companies in the UK, Zoopla is required to publish its yearly accounts.

In a sign that the London-based portal operator might be about to see some change, Zoopla took the unusual step of disclosing its own performance via a press release on Monday, several days before it was due to make its accounts public.

Revenue was down around 7% compared to the previous year, with pre-tax profits slipping from £18.8m in 2023 to a loss of £5.8m in 2024. Zoopla's press release noted that the dip was not tied to its portal business but related to a one-off non-cash impairment related to "historical investments" at the group level (likely referring to the Yourkeys developer platform bought in 2021).

There has been speculation in the British press that Silverlake is weighing up its options for a sale, with City AM reporting that the portal could be available for as little as £500m, while Sky News has reported that JP Morgan and Arma Partners have been engaged to scout out options.

Within parent company Houseful, Zoopla sits alongside Alto Software Group (a CRM provider) and Hometrack (a data provider to the mortgage industry). Alto was spun off from Zoopla earlier this year, perhaps with the intention of making the business more attractive to potential acquirers.

Zoopla's missive also included numbers for its much vaunted property tracking tool, My Home, which the company says had an engaged and partially unique audience of 4.5 million homeowners in July. The portal recently started monetising the seller leads generated by My Home via its new Prospect Plus product and is reporting conversion rates as high as 40%.

Below: Zoopla COO, Rich Hayes, discusses Zoopla's My Home tool on a recent episode of the PPW Podcast

Incidentally, the Australian portal operator REA Group acquired the Australian subsidiary of Hometrack in 2018 and has used the technology and data gained from the merger to build its own successful property tracking platform.

Looking ahead, Zoopla says it has doubled down on its core marketplace strength, highlighting recent deals struck with big-name agencies, as well as its 9 million monthly unique users and agent customer base of over 18,000 (Rightmove's was reported at 19,047 for FY 2024).