Purplebricks narrows losses as it looks to build new foundations

Online estate agent Purplebricks has hailed the progress of its turnaround strategy as it narrowed its half-year losses and posted a rise in revenue.

It has been a turbulent year for the Solihull-headquartered business, which has been forced to pull out of Australia and the United States and seen the departure of its founder Michael Bruce.

The company reported revenue of £64.8m for the six months to the end of October, the first half of its financial year, up from £57.6m.

Most of the revenue, 73%, came from its UK operations and the rest from Canada.

Group loss for the period in which the businesses in the US and Australia were wound down, was £14.1m, down from £27.8m in the same period last year.

In the UK, Purplebricks has reported an operating profit of £3.5m for the six months, down 38.6% from the £5.7m  it reported in the same period last year.

Vic Darvey, group chief executive, said: “We are very pleased with the progress made in the period in light of the market backdrop. We’ve seen resilient trading in the first half, with our diverse revenue streams and strong ARPI growth improving the quality of earnings and balancing out declining market conditions. We end the first half having now stabilised the business and the significant losses incurred last year have now been reversed with the group enjoying profitable trading.

“Our focus on operational excellence and improvements in our technology-led proposition, along with proactive management of our pricing structure will enable us to continue to achieve profitable growth. We remain confident of meeting our medium-term objective to gain a 10% share of the UK market.”

Purplebricks announced in July it will close its operations in the US and Australia at the end of the year to concentrate on its UK and Canadian interests.

The group has been restructuring since incurring losses of £56m, a process which led to the exit of its co-founder and former chief executive Michael Bruce earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the company has also announced that Mike Wroe, its senior independent non-executive director, is stepping down from the board today.

Simon Downing, independent non-executive director, is appointed as the company’s senior independent director, and Paul Pindar will assume the role of chairman of the audit committee.