Rightmove celebrates demand for ads

Property listings web site Rightmove has continued to show strong growth in revenue, earnings and cash generation over the past four months, and says it is confident of meeting full-year expectations.

However, the company saw its share price fall 1.66% after reporting that it acquired and subsequently cancelled 991,000 shares at a cost of £11.6m.

The firm said: "We continued to make healthy gains in average revenue per advertiser (ARPA) in the third quarter driven by further adoption of our advertising products." The group said that discretionary spend on advertising products rose 35%, while the number of advertisers was up 2%.

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Rightmove's most recent TV marketing campaign in September recorded its highest ever market share of page impressions, with around 90m property searches performed during the period, more than double the number of searches in the same period in 2010.

Meanwhile, estate agency and lettings membership at the end of October stood at 15,192, a 2.5% increase from the start of the year.

"The board expects to achieve further organic growth in 2012 on the assumption that housing market conditions continue to be challenging but do not substantially worsen," the firm said.

At 31 October Rightmove had £29.8m of net cash.

The share price fell 1.66% to 1,366p by 13:16.

NR