I have a small position in these guys, and they understandably crashed with lockdown. But they’re up 24% today, but without any major news. I think it’s too early for the housing market to come back to be honest.
Marketing and other operating costs outpaced revenue growth when I last looked at PURP last year. So even in a bull market this company wasn’t turning into a FAANG. The picture is likely even more grim now after Covid.
One of the more surprising things I found last year was that Alex Springer, the digital publishing giant, invested and was the second biggest investor.
First one was Neil Woodford.
Hi all,
Just posted a few thoughts on PURP on the back of half-year results today: Purplebricks: 2021 off to a strong start
Hope the piece is useful,
Dan
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Thoughts on this stock?
I’m helping a friend search for a house at the moment and to be honest I’d only ever used RightMove.
I hate monopolies and, given that the internet was supposed to democratise everything and free the information etc, I like to try alternate services when I can.
I gave Purple Bricks a go and it’s absolutely garbage. I was surprised to see it on here as a publicly limited company. The filters for searching are just awful. Unsurprisingly there weren’t many listings on there for the areas that I was searching. It was a real disappointment.
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Isn’t the point of Purplebricks that Rightmove is the dominant platform, so why pay X% for an estate agent when you could pay Y% for PB (Where X>>Y) and get the same result (your house on RM)?
If almost all prospective buyers are just looking at RM then the marginal value of different estate agents should be very small.
Concluding a sale on a property isn’t that tricky if it’s a fairly run of the mill place but if it’s in anyway odd or different it need someone with some skills.
The other factor is that purple brick offer almost no support with ‘progression’ or chain management and this causes many chains to collapse. This doesn’t matter as when you resist you often pay again or pay for upgrades the second time round.
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Are you guys OK today?
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At these values I’d be tempted to buy £100m market cap - their brand is worth more than that alone.
One thing is for sure… the brand won’t be worth £100m when they go into administration.
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Someone will give them a few quid for it, maybe not 100m but private equity would love to snap this up for a bargain. I’m not buying … yet!
Run far and fast
Not looking promising…
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It’s a shame because I bought from them and I really like the company. However I didn’t invest in them as I didn’t like the financials when I researched them.
Running out of cash
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We had such a terrible experience selling through Purple Bricks that we re-named them! And used a traditional estate agent in the end.
What caused their business to crash? Was it that they really were Purple P**cks?
Due to their unprofessionalism and the hassle they caused us, I have no sympathy.
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We also had a pet name for Purple S**ts when we had the misfortune to buy from a seller using the company. The agent associated with the sale didnt turn up with the keys! At that moment, I assumed the company must hate itself, to pay for such incompetence. And, here we are