The chief executive of the newly-expanded Emoov group has been giving details of the merger with Tepilo and the possibility of his firm floating on the London Stock Exchange or combining with a traditional operator in the relatively near future.
Russell Quirk, interviewed by financial news organisation Proactive Investors, says he is comfortable that Emoov - which in late spring merged with Tepilo and lettings platform Urban - is number two in the online agency league table to Purplebricks.
He likens the companies’ respective positions to being like Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola - both well known “but no one knows the number three, four, five or six brand of cola, do they?”
Quirk says Emoov had been talking with Tepilo “on and off” for two years, as it did to “many other competitors.”
“Scaling us up to number two made us more investible and our competitors less investible ... and there were an awful lot of synergies between us and Tepilo. ... They didn’t have a complete senior management team, which we did ... They have a very interesting brand and a brand ambassador in Sarah Beeny, and a very interesting shareholder or two” says Quirk - the latter being a reference to the historic involvement in Tepilo of the Northern and Shell media group.
Quirk says the merged company now wins around 1,000 listings per month “but we see that very much as Ground Zero ... we think that will double over the next 12 months or so.”
He also says that annualised, Emoov’s revenue is currently between £7m and £8m and by late April 2019 - the end of the firm’s financial year - it should be £12m to £13m. “And we’ll be doubling [that] for the 12 months thereafter” he says.
When asked whether listing on the London Stock Market was an option for Emoov, Quirk answers: “Maybe. Everything’s an option. It’s not on the table, it’s not off the table.”
He says his objective for the company is to have future options “whether that’s a trade sale, whether it’s a deal with a private equity house, or ... whether it’s a merger with an incumbent - a traditional estate agency business”.
And Quirk concludes the interview by saying: “If we end up being capitalised one way or another as a £500m, £600m or £700m business in a year or two ... hey, look, it’s not so shabby from a 20 quid domain name I bought back in 2010.”
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Absolute fantasyland ! Between Emoov and Tepilo they are listing circa 650/month, miles and miles from anything like a viable, profitable business. It’s going to take many millions of outside investment to grow this figure. This is just a load of hype from Mr Quirk to draw this investment in to this failed model.
You are the one in fantasyland, how has the model failed? Considering Purplebricks is worth more than the two other largest estate agency groups countrywide and Foxtons combined. Countrywide practically cant give their shares away, seems clear to me the only companies that are failing are traditional nationwide agencies who have been unable to adapt to this new "failing"model.
I love all the dino-agents still trying to halt the tide coming in. When Countrywide is about to go bust, Foxtons has lost 90% of its value and probably isn't far behind, and high street agents are closing at an increasing rate - surely it is obvious that the long feared 'reckoning' is upon us. Online estate agency is the future and high street agency is the past.
The two comments from Andrew V and James Walsh will not age well. Let's re-visit them in a couple of years.
There are a lot of opportunities out there, In my judgement there is not enough of a significant differentiation between on and off high st to be decisive which acts in favour of the status quo. Fees aren’t really the most important issue, it’s service that counts. A bad business model operated well can out perform a good one operated badly. The overriding thing is the hyper local nature of especially sales, you need great people committed to the local market and you need to build a relationship with the community. I guess this can be done without a high st office but as I said, it’s not a decisive cost saving
It would seem in this new age you can be a failing estate agent but a successful business. 2 completely separate things now. Nothing in the article about customers, sales or service - it is all about the business and the value of the company.
What about Dr Pepper? ;)
Keep telling yourself James Walsh, keep telling yourself
@JamesWalsh your scenario is bit too dramatic definitely room for both and even though like you I support the online agency model there is no way its going to go from 8% to 100% or even close to that for a long time to come.
Checks date of article to see if it really is April 1st.
>Between Emoov and Tepilo they are listing circa 650/month, miles and miles from anything like a viable, profitable business.
On that basis YOPA would be number 2 with about 900 a month.
Its a growth business and perfectly viable, they will take time to turn profit but they also have many successful investors backing and believing in their strategy so not sure what gives you authority to say its unviable. In the early stages of a business such as emoov you dont need profit to be considered a viable business, they have raised the capital they need by selling equity, what they need now is growth in client numbers. No modern company thats looking to dominate a sector through scaling the business focuses on profitability at the expense of growth. For example Uber still runs at a huge loss and Air BnB only recently turned a profit after many years of not making a profit, there are plenty of examples, but I don't think any sane person would consider these companies unviable due to a lack of profit.
Andrew, the comment over viability was from Russell Manning, I was just quoting his post to refer to the 650 listing per month and suggest that it may be YOPA that is actually number two because they are listing around 900 a month.
So Russell Quirk's comparison between Coke & Pepsi doesn't really involve his company if the 650 per month figure is correct. And if you look at PurpleBricks who are currently listing around 6000 a month there's a huge gap between number 1 and number 2. I could be wrong but I don't think Coke have 10 times the revenue of Pepsi.
So to summarise, Mr. Quirk does seem to be stretching things somewhat with his Coke & Pepsi comparison :)
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