OnTheMarket share trading frozen temporarily after 10% price slump

Trading in OnTheMarket’s shares was subject to two so-called Price Monitoring Extensions - temporary freezing of transactions because of erratic movements.

The PMEs happened at the end of trading yesterday just a few minutes apart. 

The freezes happen when algorithms are triggered as share movements exceed agreed percentages; in each case yesterday there was a trading suspension of five minutes to allow earlier trades to be checked and verified.

OnTheMarket’s shares suffered a sharp drop yesterday - they closed at around 100p, down over 10 per cent on the day.

This follows a volatile few weeks; as recently as April 16 shares were trading at 125p.

Similar ‘freezing’ mechanisms temporarily stopped trading in Countrywide shares on two occasions last week. Countrywide itself closed at yet another new low yesterday - 6.0p.

Meanwhile OnTheMarket has announced that its TV advertisements return this Bank Holiday Monday in what an executive at the portal calls a campaign too “build awareness and usage.”

OTM says the new TV campaign will reach 21.4m adults across the UK who will have the opportunity to see it an average of 3.9 times.

Ads of 10 and 30 second durations will run nationally on what the portal calls “high-rating programmes” on ITV, Channel 4 and digital channels, including some on Sky. 

It will also run on the catch-up services of the ITV Hub, All4 and Sky, as well as appearing on the Videology and Finecast networks.

“This latest round of national TV advertising highlights our commitment to invest heavily to build awareness and usage of the portal, and in turn, to generate more leads and greater value for our estate and letting agent customers” says Helen Whiteley, OTM’s commercial director.

“The key message about OnTheMarket getting thousands of new properties every month 24 hours or more before Rightmove or Zoopla powerfully engages with those who are actively looking for a new home and need to ensure they don’t miss out.

“All of this heavy-weight investment is on top of the stand-out co-branding which thousands of our agent customers have supported us with since launch.”

Last month OnTheMarket announced that more than a million people were using its property alert service and that it was sending 526m instant alert emails in a year.