Online agency Purplebricks, which launched just a few months ago in April, is already considering floating on the stock exchange next year according to one report.
Launched by brothers Michael and Kenny Bruce, who ran the traditional high street agency Burchell Edwards in the Midlands, Purplebricks is backed by Paul Pindar, the former chief executive of outsourcing and business management firm Capita. Martin Bolland, Capita's non-executive chairman, also has a financial stake in the business.
In August the so-called star' fund manager Neil Woodford invested £7m in the new firm, describing it as a highly disruptive business model in the world of estate agency with the vision, the technology and an experienced management team.
The agency, which uses a network of local brokers to handle transactions, has told the Daily Telegraph that is has so far been instructed on 1,000 properties and sold more than 400; it claims to have saved vendors more than £1m in fees in its first three months.
This is some way off its eventual target business, however.
Over the summer the financial news service Citywire claimed that Purplebricks' target for the financial year ending July 31 2015 is 85,413 instructions and for the following year 100,849 - if met, that would represent 10 per cent of all sales.
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Comments
Best float before posting accounts, some mugs will stump up cash.
By my reckoning thats less than 100k revenue pcm - about the same as x1 small Foxtons office!! I doubt that will have covered the appalling TV advert costs let alone anything else - no surprise therefore that they sold a 30% share for 7m they were no doubt in dreally esperate need of revenue. I suspect that this announcement is a ploy to try and convince some other city mugs to bankroll their continued losses in the hope of a big return if they float - IMO there is more chance of the Titanic successfully floating than this money pit.