Zoopla announces Technicweb acquisition as FY profit and revenue rise

30th Nov 2016 07:38

(ShareCast News) - Zoopla reported a rise in full-year profit and revenue and announced the acquisition of estate agency website design and hosting business Technicweb.In the year to the end of September, pre-tax profit rose 38% to £46.2m on revenue of £197.7m, up 84% on the year.Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation were up 58% to £77.1m.The company also reported strong traffic over the period, with over 600m visits to the group's websites and mobile apps, 68% of which were via mobile.Zoopla proposed a final dividend of 3.7p per share, taking the total dividend for the period to 5.2p per share.Founder and chief executive officer Alex Chesterman said: "We continue to lead innovation in the property and comparison markets as we work towards fulfilling our mission of providing the most useful resources for consumers when finding, moving and managing their home and being the most effective partner for related businesses."Our Property Services division has traded in line with management expectations with ARPA growth across every vertical and we have now seen 18 consecutive months of UK Agency partner growth. The acquisition of Property Software Group has been transformational, allowing us to offer the UK's only end-to-end solution for property professionals including software, workflow, CRM and marketing tools. As a Group, we now have significant cross-sell opportunities with over 23,000 unique Property partners taking at least of one of our services."As well as the Technicweb acquisition, Zoopla also announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Neos, the UK's first connected home insurance provider.Numis said this was "a good set of FY results" that have come in a little ahead of its estimates. The brokerage had expected revenues of £186m and adjusted EBITDA of £77.3m."We do not expect to materially change our headline profit estimates that sit a little ahead of consensus, though our revenues will go up and margin down a little given the shape of 2016 results," said Numis, which rates the stock at 'add' with a 36pp price target.At 1050 GMT, the shares were up 7.3% to 342.40p.