Foxtons Group PLC

LSE:FOXT

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q4

[Nicholas John Budden]

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Full Year 2021 Results Call. Today, I'm joined by Richard Harris, our CFO; and Patrick Franco, our COO, and we'll all be on hand following the presentation to take any questions you might have. I'll begin the session this morning by giving an overview of our performance for the period and an update on strategic progress. Richard will then take you through the financials before I finish with some perspectives on outlook.

So, starting on slide 5, let me cover group highlights. Overall, 2021 was a good year for Foxtons with revenues, profits and cash flows significantly ahead of 2019 and 2020, and good progress made on our core objectives. We've made the positive start to 2022 with clear strategic priorities embedded throughout the organization and subject to the geopolitical situation, we expect to be able to build on the strong progress made last year.

We've also clarified our approach to capital allocation and, in particular, we've built a solid pipeline of lettings acquisition, which, like those already completed, we believe can deliver attractive returns to shareholders.

On a continuum basis, revenue was £126.5 million, up 35% against 2020 and up 18% against 2019, reflecting market share growth in all three of our divisions, improved sales market conditions, and a contribution in line with expectations from the lettings acquisitions we've made over the last two years, including D&G.

Adjusted operating profit was £8.9 million after making a £1.5 million voluntary repayment of business rates, and we generated £6.6 million of net free cash flow during the year, reinforcing our strong balance sheet position with no external borrowings and net cash of £19.4 million at year-end.

I'll go on to cover divisional performance in more detail in a moment, but in summary, we saw improved performance across the board. Lettings performed well with revenue growing 30% comprising 12% in organic growth, complemented by the successful integration of several lettings acquisitions since 2020, including a £10 million revenue contribution from D&G. Importantly, by successfully integrating these acquisitions in Foxtons, we were able to improve the overall profit contribution from lettings by 41%.

In sales, growing market share is our top priority, and it was encouraging to see this improve in 2021 for a second consecutive year to help support a 53% increase in our property sales transactions. Of course, we also experienced more buoyant sales market conditions last year, driven by pandemic recovery and the stamp duty holiday. And then this increased activity also benefited Alexander Hall, our mortgage broking business, we saw revenues grow by 17% to £9.5 million.

On the strategy, we made some good progress against our core objectives for 2021. D&G was a significant acquisition for the group, and it's made a material contribution to revenue and profit over the year. Having now disposed of the sales business and successfully integrated lettings, we expect a £4 million contribution from the business in 2022.

Our ongoing programs to drive sales intensity across our branch network and our digital marketing programs deployed through our sales funnel have helped deliver significant productivity growth with revenue per branch and per employee up 36% and 26%, respectively. These results give us the confidence to invest in additional sales head count in the coming year in support of further market share growth. These same programs also helped improve cross-sell, with over 50% of our sales deals last year using one of our cross-sell services, primarily mortgage or conveyancing, representing £10 million worth of our revenues.

We've also reinforced our newest sales channels, including Build to Rent, the Asia Pacific Desk, and Private Office, which, between them, delivered £9 million in revenue last year. As I mentioned earlier, we now have a clearer approach to capital allocation and with the improvement in performance last year, we decided to recommence our dividend program and complete a £5.7 million share buyback program. This year, having integrated D&G, we plan to invest a further £8 million in the lettings acquisition.

Moving on to slide 6, let me go into slightly more detail on property sales markets which, last year, were the most positive we have seen for some time. To a certain extent, the sales market was inevitably defined by the stamp duty holidays and a gradual improving outlook amongst buyers and sellers as the disruption caused by the pandemic receded.

Despite gradually increasing prices throughout the year, H1 transaction levels were very strong, and H2 was also perhaps better than many expected, with transaction levels relatively high compared to the recent past. Average prices in London grew steadily by 5% during the year to £521,000 with Foxtons maintaining a 10% premium over the market, with our average sales price being closer to £580,000. Against this backdrop, our job was to capitalize on the improved market conditions and extend our leadership position by growing share and maintaining our premium position.

Our sales volumes grew 53%, which was ahead of the market, reflecting an improving share position for the second consecutive year, and this fed through to 51% growth in sales commissions at an average fee of 2.4%, which we've now sustained for many years despite the flexibility we've introduced in high value markets through targeted price offers and increased competition.

Our ability to deliver market share growth whilst maintaining a leading position in transaction volumes at premium prices reflects the strength of our brand and our distinctive business model, which brings together highly incentivized experts sales teams with the best technology and increasingly the best digital marketing platforms to give them the edge they need to deliver great results for our clients.

Looking ahead for a moment, we're encouraged by the start we've made in 2022, especially given the likelihood of further interest rates and the geopolitical uncertainty of recent weeks. And despite less sales staff coming to market in the first quarter, the value of our under-offer pipeline is above where we were this time last year and well ahead of 2019.

In lettings on slide 7, market conditions were slightly more challenging, with COVID-19 restrictions leading to an excess supply of stock during the first half of the year and much lower rental rates, which didn't recover to pre-pandemic levels until partway through Q3. Once restrictions were lifted, however, we saw significant increases in tenant demand as London reopened and workers and students returned to the capital.

Our property management and lettings teams worked extremely hard during these tricky and rapidly changing market conditions to meet the needs of landlords and tenants using our automated lettings platforms and applications to ensure that tenants quickly found a suitable property and allowed those continue to make a reasonable return on their investments.

Landlord loyalty is a key driver of performance for us, and by consistently delivering excellent service through our property managers and branch teams, we were able to achieve organic revenue growth of 12%. With the additional contribution made by our recent acquisitions, our lettings division delivered revenues of £74 million, 30% up from prior year. This strong performance was also supported by good growth in our Build to Rent division, where our revenues were up 69% year-on-year.

Our experience with the integration of D&G has been very positive. We were pleased to grow the size of our portfolio during our first 10 months of ownership and have now successfully integrated all landlords into our lettings platforms. We've also taken on the whole D&G lettings team with some 80 excellent property managers, branch managers and negotiators joining the Foxtons team in February to provide valuable continuity of service for landlords.

We now serve over 25,000 tenancies, the largest portfolio of any London agent, and 25% more than we did just two years ago. There are lots of opportunities to provide further growth in this area, both organically and inorganically, and based on the performance of recent acquisitions, we've developed a good pipeline of acquisition candidates for this year.

You may recall, in June last year, we set out an action plan designed to realize the potential of the business and deliver significant shareholder value. Following Nigel's appointment as Chairman in October, we've further prioritized to identify our core set of objectives that we believe will deliver substantial shareholder growth. And you can see these laid out on slide 9.

We are currently focused on three areas of priority: First, driving organic revenue growth by increasing market share in sales through the development of digital marketing with our sales funnel and improving productivity by introducing more leveraged incentives and streamlining senior sales management to improve accountability. We could also drive organic growth in lettings, both in high growth sectors like Build to Rent and within our traditional landlord base by providing high levels of service by combining the expertise of our brand letting team with our centralized property managers and tech platforms.

We also see significant growth opportunity through our newer sales channels that are designed to optimize performance in specific markets such as our Asia Pacific Desk and our Private Office offering. Cross-selling is already well developed within the business, particularly with respect to Alexander Hall, which following a review earlier this year, we believe, has an excellent potential for growth. As a result, we'll be investing more heavily in new broker capacity this year in order to realize its full future potential. But there's more that we can do to serve our customer base with a wider range of products, and our investment in Boomin provides us with access to a digital marketplace which we believe could be a significant revenue stream in the future.

Our second strategic priority and our preferred use of free cash is lettings acquisition where we've established a good track record of buying, integrating, and retaining high-quality lettings portfolios into a scalable platform to deliver good profit growth. While growing revenue is the key pathway to increased profitability, the management of our cost base also has a significant part to play.

The three biggest costs for us are people, property, and

[ph]

rent growth (00:11:00). Over the past three years, we've consolidated our branch network where there was an opportunity to improve overall contribution and realign resources to our most profitable markets. More recently, we've streamlined our senior management teams and made changes to their remuneration to improve accountability and align incentives more closely with those of shareholders.

Slide 10 recaps the progress we've made towards our strategic priorities in 2021, many of which I've already covered this morning, and provides some more color on specific initiatives for the year ahead. We've delivered good levels of organic revenue growth and improved market share in all segments of the business, and our cross-selling newer revenues channels contributed a combined total of £19 million in revenues.

We achieved 12% organic growth in lettings, and this was complemented by a significant revenue profit growth from acquisitions, which are delivering returns for us of over 20% on invested capital. There's more to come from these acquisitions this year and we have a well-progressed pipeline of candidates for 2022 that would support further investment of over £8 million by year end. In 2021, the top line revenue growth we achieved, together with control of our cost base, led to significant turnarounds in our operating profit of £8.9 million.

Looking ahead to 2022, we're very focused on delivering a sustainable recovery and we have clear plans this year to maintain momentum. In particular having delivered consistent market share growth over the last two years and with the pandemic largely behind us, we'll be investing in our sales and mortgage businesses, increasing head count in our negotiator and mortgage advisor teams to ensure we have sufficient capacity to build on the growth we achieved last year.

2021 was another good year for our Build to Rent business, which is now well-established in its high growth sector and that's going to play an increasingly prominent role in the London's letting market. Like most companies, we will face inflationary pressures this year and next. And so, it will be important to retain a strong focus on our cost base to ensure we can deliver adequate profit growth.

Senior management staff costs will come down in 2022 as a result of the streamlining of senior management roles towards the end of 2021 and the new remuneration packages that have been agreed with senior management and the executive directors which will be set out in our Annual Report. The disposal of D&G's loss-making sales business and the integration of its lettings business was delivered in February, and as a result, we continue to derive incremental profits from that business.

Let me now hand over to Richard to review our financials in more detail.

[Richard David Harris]

Thanks, Nic, and good morning, everyone. I'll start on slide 12 with the income statement. Before I go into detail here, it's worth noting the results are all presented on a continuing operations basis, and therefore exclude the results from the D&G sales business, which was disposed off in February 2022. The results in the discontinued operations can be seen in the appendix to this presentation.

In 2021, total revenue grew by 35% or £33 million, and I'll take you through the component parts of that in a moment. Organic revenue growth was 25%, whilst the D&G lettings business contributed £10 million of revenues and £3.7 million of operating profit. The cost base grew in the year by £24.6 million, driven in part by the pandemic impact last year and in part by the D&G acquisition in March 2021. Employee commissions are also higher in the year as a result of improved organic revenues.

Taking these factors into account, I'm pleased to say that full year adjusted operating profit from continuing operations was £8.9 million, an improvement of £7 million on the prior year and £9.6 million on 2019, which is the pre-pandemic comparator.

Adjusted items totaled £1.4 million in the year, and they primarily relate to costs associated with the original D&G acquisition, the subsequent disposal of the D&G sales business, and a write-down in our investment

[indiscernible]

(00:15:06). There are some reorganization costs in the year, but they're broadly offset with some vacant property-related credits.

Net finance costs of £1.9 million were charged in relation to the IFRS 16 lease liabilities. And it's worth noting that all of the property costs related to D&G have been classified under discontinued operations as the properties will no longer be used by the Foxtons Group.

The profit before tax in the year was £5.6 million, up from a loss of £1.4 million in 2020. And the total tax charge in the year was £6.9 million. And of this, £0.5 million only relates to current tax on profits. £6.4 million of deferred tax impact is primarily a non-cash accounting re-measurement due to the announcement that the UK corporation tax rate will rise from 19% to 25% with effect from April 2023.

Moving on to lettings on slide 13, which accounted for 59% of group revenue in the year. Here, revenue grew by 30% driven by the acquisition of Douglas & Gordon, which, as I mentioned earlier, contributed £10 million or 18% to growth. Organic growth is 12% driven by average rents increase of 3% versus 2020, improved market volumes, market share gains, and increased revenues from our property management services.

Build to Rent revenue grew by 69% in the year to £2.7 billion, as the market leading position we have built in London over the last few years, combined with an increased number of units been available for rent, came to fruition. It's fair to say that we expect Build to Rent to be a further driver of growth in the years to come.

The contribution margin remained flat at 70% in the year, and the operating leverage benefit of higher organic revenue was offset by the impact of the D&G acquisition, which was dilutive to contribution margin level, but very profitable overall.

The tenancy portfolio grew by 16% during the year from 21,800 units to 25,200 units at year-end. In part, this was driven by our acquisition strategy and the D&G lettings business contributing 2,900 tenancies at the date of acquisition. As of a few weeks ago, all of the D&G tenancies have now been successfully integrated into the Foxtons' infrastructure.

The chart on the right hand side demonstrates the growth in the tenancy portfolio over the last two years, including the impact of our lettings book acquisition strategy. Importantly, the acquisitions that have completed to-date are delivering strong financial returns. The bolt-on acquisitions are continuing to deliver a return on capital employed in excess of 25% and D&G is expected to deliver a return in excess of 20% and £4 million of operating profit in 2022.

Finally, the proportion of the lettings portfolio that is actively managed dropped by 1%, from 34% to 33% in the year. However, revenues from property management services grew by 25% in total and 11% on an organic basis.

On slide 14 and sales, revenues grew by 51% or £14.5 million on a continuing basis. This growth was all volume-driven with average revenue per transaction down marginally due to the higher proportion of new home sales. New home sales typically attract a lower average fee, but benefit from economies of scale due to the volume of units in a typical development.

The volume growth was supported by the stamp duty holiday that ultimately ended in September but, in addition to this, we also saw changing consumer requirements, improved confidence in the residential sales market in London, and market share gains.

Sales contribution grew by £8.7 million or 62% to £22.8 million, driven by these improved volumes. Contribution margin also improved to 53%, which was driven by improved employee productivity and reflects the operating leverage that is inherent in the business. And whilst we intend to grow our sales

[indiscernible]

(00:19:15) head count in the year ahead, there is still room for further improvements in sales productivity, and this remains an area of focus for the business.

In Alexander Hall, our mortgage brokers, we saw revenues grow by 17% which, again, is largely volume-driven. Volume growth there was 14% and was similarly impacted by the improved sales market conditions. The growth is lower than in the sales business due to the stabilizing effect of remortgage business, which helped to provide a resilient revenue stream in 2020, the year of the pandemic.

Average revenue per transaction was up 2% driven by the higher proportion of new purchased mortgages in the period. Contribution margin in Alexander Hall was down 4% to 43% in the year with capacity constraints limiting profitability. Alexander Hall has delivered a relatively stable contribution and operating profit over the last few years. It is our intention to invest in the adviser base in 2022 in order to remove the capacity constraints the business has been operating under and grow revenue and profitability in the medium term. I'll touch on the implications of this shortly.

Moving on to slide 16 covering cash flow, the business generated net free cash inflow of £6.6 million in the year. There are a few points to note within this. The cash flow includes the repayment of £2.1 million of lease deferrals that were negotiated in 2020 and it also includes the voluntary repayment of £1.5 million of rates relief made in the second half of the year. Adjusted items outflow of £1 million includes expenses associated with the acquisition of Douglas & Gordon, as well as cost associated with historic branch closures and reorganization costs. Capital expenditure included investment in IT, equipment and branch-related spend.

Moving to the right-hand side of this slide on the uses of cash flow, in the period, the total outflow in relation to the Douglas & Gordon acquisition was £11.1 million and this was net of cash acquired. We invested £3 million in Boomin, which is a new generation property portal, spend on share buybacks of £5.7 million in the period and we recommenced the payment of an ordinary dividend for the first time since 2017 with £0.6 million or £0.0018 per share for the interim dividend being paid in the year.

The final dividend of £0.0027 per share will be paid in June 2022 and the cost will be approximately £0.8 million. Taking all of these items into account, net cash at the end of the period was £19.4 million on a continuing basis, and this excludes the £3.7 million of cash that is classified as held for sale.

On slide 17, I'll provide us some guidance and the key items impacting operating costs and cash flow in the year ahead. Firstly, as with the vast majority of businesses at the moment, Foxtons is facing relatively significant inflation and other cost pressures. Examples include the increases in Employer's National Insurance contributions, minimum wage rates, business rates, and insurance premiums. At this stage, we're not expecting to see any material energy and price inflation as the majority of our properties are on fixed price deal that was entered into in 2020 and runs until October 2022.

In terms of the cost pressures, I did mention add up to around £3.5 million of headwinds. However, those increases are expected to be offset by a number of management actions, including the streamlining of senior management roles, further improvements in employee productivity, and corporate cost savings. The actions to deliver these savings have largely been completed already.

As I mentioned earlier, it is our intention to grow our sales and negotiator head count in the year ahead. The improved market conditions, market share gains seen recently, and the improvements in employee productivity give us the confidence that now is the right time to increase the sales workforce to drive improved profitability for the medium term.

The cost of investing in head count this year is expected to be approximately £1 million. Given the time it takes negotiators to learn the role and the time taken for sales transactions to move from origination through to exchange, it is expected this investment will be broadly breakeven at an operating profit level in 2022. Importantly, it will be earnings-enhancing from 2023 onwards. The investment in Alexander Hall's adviser base is more modest around £0.4 million and is also expected to be breakeven in 2022 and earnings-enhancing in 2023 and beyond.

Taking all of the above factors into consideration, but before any further lettings acquisitions, operating costs are expected to be approximately £1 million higher year-on-year in 2022, driven by the investment in sales negotiator head count.

Turning now to the cash flow, as Nic mentioned earlier, we've built a good pipeline of lettings book acquisitions and expect to be able to deploy £8 million of capital in the year ahead. As I highlighted earlier, lettings book acquisitions provide an attractive return on investment for the business and a good level of incremental profit as we integrate the acquired tenancies into the Foxtons' infrastructure.

Capital expenditure in the year ahead is expected to be £2.5 million which includes spend on the consumer-facing website, branch relocations and refurbishments, and IT server upgrades. Finally, the £3.7 million of cash classified as held for sale at year-end has transferred with the disposed D&G sales business and there've been fees of £200,000 paid in relation to the disposal. Deferred consideration of £0.5 million from the original D&G acquisition has also been paid in the early part of 2022. We do not expect any further cash flow impact from either the original acquisition or disposal of the D&G sales business.

I'll summarize on slide 18 the key parts of the financial update. We've seen good growth in all business segments during 2021. You can see that when combined with the inherent operating leverage within the business, the revenue growth leads to significant improvement in profitability. The D&G lettings business has been an important driver of revenue growth and profitability in the year. Having now been integrated into the Foxtons' infrastructure, we anticipate delivering £4 million of profit from the acquired tenancies in the year ahead.

The significant inflation and cost pressures are being mitigated by management cost actions, most of which have already been executed. We have a clear plan to invest in both lettings book acquisitions and sales and negotiator head count in 2022 in order to drive improved medium-term profitability.

Finally, we're now back into the rhythm of returning cash to shareholders, having recommenced the ordinary dividend for the first time since 2017. In addition, we returned £5.7 million of share buybacks in the period.

I'll now hand back over to Nic for a summary and views on the trading outlook.

[Nicholas John Budden]

Thank you, Richard. To sum up, 2021 was a year of recovery and much improved performance for Foxtons, reflecting our ability to grow share, maintain premium fees, capitalize on more buoyant markets and grow new sales channels. We made good progress against core strategic objectives and in particular proved our ability to successfully acquire and integrate lettings books.

Turning to outlook, in lettings, we expect rents, which have now surpassed pre-pandemic levels, to remain strong throughout the remainder of the year in the face of strong tenant demand and relatively constrained rental stock. A number of large Build to Rent developments are due to launch this year and we expect continued growth in this area as we deepen our B2B relationships with developers and institutional investors.

In sales, our under-offer pipeline is currently significantly above 2019 levels, giving us confidence into the spring, and as I mentioned earlier, Alexander Hall will be a focus for investment this year to ensure that we have sufficient capacity to continue to capitalize on the increased cross-sell opportunities from Foxtons. Last year, you saw us getting back on the front foot in London, but it was only a first step. And with a clear strategy now in place and a good start to the year, we expect to be able to build on the strong progress we have already made.

That concludes the formal presentation for today. We do have one-to-one meetings with many of you over the next week, but we're obviously happy to take any questions you may have now through the operator.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

The first telephone question today is from the line of Sam Cullen from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.

[Sam Cullen, Analyst, Peel Hunt LLP]

Hi. Morning, everyone. Yeah, Sam here. I've got – it's four, but kind of really two, they're interrelated. Do you want them one at a time or do you want them all at once?

[Nicholas John Budden]

All at once, Sam, and then we'll – yeah.

[Sam Cullen, Analyst, Peel Hunt LLP]

Yeah. No worries. So, the first one is on the sales market. I guess, firstly if you could outline your kind of broad expectations for the London sales market this year. And then you've alluded a number of times to market share gains. Are you able to give us what you think your estimate of your market share is in terms of the sales market either overall or in the areas in which you operate? And then when you look at that share versus where it was, say, back in 2014, 2013, how much of the relative lack of share do you think is down to reduced head count and will be kind of one back as you ask negotiators back to the desks in the coming year?

The second one is on the lettings business, just in terms of the multiples you're looking to acquire lettings books at and the relative risks that they don't close, i.e., how far advanced is that pipeline and I'm guessing that it's pretty far advanced if you're willing to give us an £8 million figure?

And then, secondly, just on the absolute size of the Build to Rent business, what's that in pound note terms and is there any difference in the contribution margin of that business versus just the core lettings business?

[Nicholas John Budden]

Thanks, Sam. I'll take the first two, and then maybe I'll ask Richard to cover the second ones. In terms of sales for this year, we're looking to build on the progress that we've made in 2021 in terms of market share and productivity through the digital marketing platforms we've got and greater head count. And so, if you look at sort of external sources, anyone – anywhere between 10% and 20% reduction in the volume in the UK and London, we expect London to be slightly more buoyant than the UK, generally, because we sort of saw the reverse last year. And I do believe that, from a revenue perspective as well, we'll continue to see prices

[ph]

pretty flat (00:30:46) in London.

So, last year, we saw a 5% increase in prices, but that was really flat in the flat market and sort of more like 10% to 8% in the house market. We are over-indexed in flats, and so we expect that to come back this year as well. So, we're – we are setting our top sales to target for growth in sales and with the pipeline where it is at the moment, it gives us some confidence into the spring, as I said.

In terms of market share gains, we – if we – we look at market share in two ways and, of course, there are relatively unreliable data sets on market share and sales. But the best estimate we've got at the moment is between 3% and 3.5% of volume, 7% to 8% of value in the markets in which we operate in London on sales.

And back to 2014, 2015 question, clearly, the opportunity there was slightly artificially inflated in terms of our market share for two reasons. One is, the markets were much more buoyant, much more significant on absolute value. We haven't seen since then many agents leaving the market. And so, the cake got a bit smaller between 2016 and 2020.

And also, if you remember, back between 2012 and 2015, we embarked on a fairly aggressive expansion program within London. And if you remember, when we were opening our branches over that period, we probably doubled the size of our network and we were offering property sales

[ph]

to zero (00:32:18) during that time. And so, the sort of weighted average of our fee was slightly lower than where it is today. So, competitively, the differentiation in fee has increased and improved over that period.

In terms of lettings multiples and Build to Rent, Richard, do you want to handle those?

[Richard David Harris]

Yeah. So, at the moment, the current multiples that we're seeing in the marketplace are about 2 to 2.25 times, something like that, and that's probably up from 1.8 to 2 times when we were acquiring books in 2020. And I suppose that's a reflection of the number of people that are out there buying books at this point in time. Build to Rent in 2021 was £2.7 million worth of revenue contribution, and that's up from £1.6 million in the prior year, so growth of around 70%.

And then in terms of the individual contribution from each Build to Rent deals, so because the – because it's a – and we're dealing with a kind of corporate client rather than an individual landlord, and the corporate client is bringing a large volume of units to us, we generally accept a slightly lower fee

[indiscernible]

(00:33:29) in Build to Rent. However, that's kind of mostly offset by the fact that the average rent in these properties is typically around 15% higher than what a private landlord will be renting that property at just because of the quality of the building and the quality of the facilities. So, that – they kind of broadly net out and that will give a kind of a contribution that's not materially different to the wider

[ph]

state

[indiscernible]

(00:33:49).

[Sam Cullen, Analyst, Peel Hunt LLP]

Great. Thank you very much.

[Nicholas John Budden]

Sam, I would just add to the lettings multiples. I mean, we have a – there's a – obviously, the working practice in the real estate market is to value these business on revenue multiples. I mean, we look at achieving a return on capital that's attractive

[indiscernible]

(00:34:10) 20% plus is the way that we really look at those synergies.

[Sam Cullen, Analyst, Peel Hunt LLP]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

Next question is from the line of Andy Murphy from Edison Research. Please go ahead.

[Andy Murphy, Analyst, Edison Investment Research Ltd.]

Morning, guys. I'll keep it simple, but two, hopefully, fairly quick questions. And first of all, just to clarify, the £1.5 million of business rates you talked about, given the profit of £8.9 million, is it correct to assume that without that, the profit figure would have been £1.5 million higher?

And secondly, the three growth channels that you referred to, Build to Rent, APAC, and the Private Office, £9 million of revenue, can you perhaps give us a bit of a flavor or a steer on what's your best guesstimate of what that could turn out to be over the next year or even two years?

[Nicholas John Budden]

Hi, Andy. Thanks for those. Yeah, you're right. The £1.5 million is a voluntary repayment, so it would have – our operating profit would have been £1.5 million higher had we not chosen to make that payment.

And then in the new channels, Build to Rent, we sort of covered that earlier. I mean, we've sort of grown from £1.6 million to £2.7 million. And we think there's decent growth in that market. If you look at the three to five-year period, we're looking at another maybe 25,000 units coming on stream into London during that period. It's relatively small base at the moment, but that is clearly where that industry and that sector is attracting a lot of capital at the moment.

In terms of Private Office, last year, it was about £4.5 million and that was significantly up from the year before. And we think, although that market attracts a lot of attention, we think that there's about a £60 million commission pot available in London, if you like, for the universe of the market. And so, we should be looking at capturing a reasonable market share of that. But I think it would be wrong to imagine that we would get significant double-digits market share in that sector because there's some very strong brands at the high end.

And then finally, in terms of Asia Pacific, it's really difficult to give a sort of an indication of the market size there because we're very new in that business. We've generated very acceptable revenues in our first couple of years of operation, lots of them coming into lettings as well as sales. And so, we'll have to wait a couple of – another year or so, I think, before we can give a firmer forecast on that.

Anything to add there, Richard?

[Richard David Harris]

None.

[Andy Murphy, Analyst, Edison Investment Research Ltd.]

All right. Okay. Thank you very much.

[Nicholas John Budden]

[indiscernible]

(00:37:11).

[Operator]

There are no further telephone questions. At this time, I would like to turn it over for any Web questions if there are.

[Richard David Harris]

Yes. So, we've got a few Web questions that have come through from Chris Millington. So, I'll take them one at a time. So, what is the expected timing and acquisition multiple on lettings book deal? So, we've talked about the multiples, so – but Nic, do you want to talk about the expected timing.

[Nicholas John Budden]

Yeah. We've spent a lot of time last year. Obviously, our priority was to integrate those acquisitions that we bought the year before and obviously Douglas & Gordon was a large business to ingest and we wanted to get that right. We're very satisfied with the way that's gone. At the same time, we were creating and evaluating a good pipeline of other candidates. And, as I said, we've got an expectation of investing £8 million at least in further acquisitions this year, and we would like to get on with those as soon as possible really. And so, I'm hoping by the half year, certainly, we'll be able to sort of apprise you on a number of those that have completed.

[Richard David Harris]

Second question is, what do you think sales and lettings market share did in full year 2021, and if your share of listings pointing to further gains in full year 2022?

[Nicholas John Budden]

Yeah, I think we gained good share in 2021 across all three business areas, and we're continuing to see market share and listings on lettings improve. And from what we can tell in sales, although I would caveat that with just from the perspective of relatively lack of data being available from the aggregators and land registry at the moment.

[Richard David Harris]

Next question is around staff productivity. So, it looks like impressive improvement in staff productivity in 2021. Could you please put this into historic context in relation to 2014 and 2015?

[Nicholas John Budden]

Yeah. So, we were probably still – in terms of measuring that indicator on deals per negotiator, we would probably still be about 20% below where we were in 2014 or 2015. But there's a lot of moving parts between the differences there. Obviously, back then, the market was very much substantially more buoyant than it is and was in the last two or three years. And so, that drives a lot of the productivity growth.

What we're seeing today from productivity growth is the better management techniques and better learning and development that we've implemented within our sales forces. The deployment – the effect of the deployment of our digital marketing, which improves conversion through the funnel, together with the market share gains which have increased our share of the local markets in each of our branches. And so, the productivity improvements we've seen this year over last year, certainly, are more around our own actions rather than the market helping us. And so, with further growth in the market, we would expect to see those returning back to those same sorts of levels of productivity that we achieved in 2014, 2015.

And then, the last question is update on Boomin. That investment, we're pleased we made it. The Boomin portal itself is hitting all of its consumer Web traffic targets and has taken on sorts of levels of estate agency branches that you would expect. And it certainly accelerated far beyond the rates at which the other portals grew their base. They're coming into an interesting period now. I think in April, the model is turning from a free model to a fee-paying model. The feedback from agents seems positive around that, but we await to see, obviously, finally in April, May, June the level of stickiness of agents. But yeah, that business is going very well and the technical platform and the product platform deployment has been very good.

[Richard David Harris]

And they are all the questions from Chris Millington. Are there any more questions on the telephone line?

[Operator]

There are no further telephone questions at this time.

[Richard David Harris]

Do you want to conclude, Nic?

[Nicholas John Budden]

Yeah. Okay. Well, that concludes the call for today then. And as I've said before, I look forward to seeing those of you that we're meeting this week and next on the road.