Rightmove's online traffic reaches new high

UK property website Rightmove said online traffic has set new records this year following the release of its new application for smartphone and tablet devices.

Traffic in the period from January 1st to April 30th reached a new high, rising 20% on the previous year, the company said in a trading update Wednesday.

April was the group's busiest month ever with 1.25bn pages viewed.

The number of Rightmove enquiries also hit record levels with an 80% year-on-year jump in April.

Mobile traffic boosted results after the launch of Rightmove apps and the optimised mobile website.

Its new mobile app has been downloaded nearly 3.0m times since its release at the start of the year.

Average revenue per advertiser (APRA) grew as a result of sales of additional advertising products and price increases.

The overall number of advertisers at the end of April was 18,526, up 1.0% on December 2012.

Agency APRA continued to improve following the adoption of further advertising products and price hikes. Rightmove agency membership at the end of April came to 15,495, an increase of 251 branches since the start of the year.

New homes APRA soared as a result of a rise in sales of advertising products, healthy demand for email campaigns and price rises. However, the number of developments at the end of April decreased by 121 to 2,315.

The firm said operating costs came between £35m to £36m as stated in the annual results in March.

A final dividend for 2013 of 14p per share will be paid on June 7th.

"With healthy growth in average spend per advertiser so far this year and

assuming there is no significant deterioration in the UK housing market, the board remains confident of meeting its expectations," the company concluded.

Shares rose 2.41% to 1,954p at 10:10 Wednesday.

RD