LSL has left Connells as the only corporate agent with a stake in Zoopla after selling its remaining shares in the portal.
The parent company of Your Move, Reeds Rains and Marsh & Parsons announced it has sold the remaining 3.5m ordinary shares it had in Zoopla Property Group for an average price of £3.17 between September 19 and October 31.
LSL had already sold 7.8m shares in September and now no longer holds any ordinary shares in Zoopla.
The announcement said the proceeds of the disposal will be used to “reduce corporate indebtedness and for other general corporate purposes”.
Countrywide already sold the last of its shares in Zoopla in September, raising £29.2m, while Connells sold a tranche in the same month but still holds a stake.
Worrying when a stakeholder sells out of an industry related business……… not getting the returns they expect from Z?
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It’s standard for investors to pull out when they want to use the money elsewhere in there core business.
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Maybe someone knows something we don’t or rather they have realised what we already knew?
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I’ve sat here for a few minutes trying to work this one out.
It could be quite simply that they want the money.
It could be that as major shareholders they may have an understanding of the direction in which ZPG is about to go that they don’t understand / appreciate /like * (delete as applicable).
Or they could fear the data gathering expertise that ZPG have and in an ever more connected “data-mining” industry they may be positioning themselves to compete against ZPG in terms of the bolt on services such as U-Switch.
I would consider PropTech companies such as Fixflo ideal for this type of bolt on to an internet savvy corporate.
That last one actually makes the most sense given the behaviour of Countrywide recently.
If the CW experiment works (a big “if” I grant you, but one with a huge payoff if they can get it right) then I would expect the other big corporates to follow suit very quickly. Indeed, their own shareholders might get very (litigiously) cross with them if they did not already have something in mind – call it a Plan B.
Any organisation, big or small, should consider the alternatives…
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This last sale tranche will have raised on average around £11m, and in their disclosure this will go some way to reducing indebtedness. Solid house keeping most likely, but also a call on the market that they will need a rainy day fund and probably a belief that the Zoopla shares have maxed and therefore, sell as close to the top of the market. The share price high this year was £3.49, today it is £3.08 and the peak was at the highest level since their floatation, so it makes sense to me and with all the corporates selling so close together, rest assured they believe or have seen something that says this is the peak. LSL share price is down from its peak this year of £3.35 to todays price £2.03, so that will be another reason.
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Or, are they making way to ditch Z and move to OTM?
HMMMMMMM I wonder
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