Hunters Property hails strong maiden results as public company
Hunters Property has posted a jump in revenues and profits in its first set of annual results since floating on London's junior AIM market last summer.
The national sales and lettings estate agency said sales increased by 31 per cent to £12m last year after expanding its footprint with 32 new branches, of which 23 were conversions of existing independent businesses.
Hunters also snapped up home-counties franchised estate agency chain, Country Properties, adding another 23 branches to the business and taking its network of branches to 170 at the year end.
The firm's sales and lettings income reached £30.2m last year – up 42 per cent on the prior year – while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 46 per cent to £1.57m.
"Despite the various challenges UK property market faced in 2015, I am very pleased with the group's performance therefore presenting our first annual results as a public company. We continued to improve our core business, with increased revenue per branch and 96 per cent customer satisfaction rating,” said Kevin Hollinrake, the company's chairman.
The company said that 2016 so far "looked promising", despite an ongoing shortage of property for sale or to let, the uncertainty of the EU referendum, and increasing levels of competition between traditional and online-only agents.
"We entered the year with a substantially increased pipeline, with good ongoing buyer and tenant demand and a government that is openly very supportive of accelerated new home-building and ownership. We are therefore well set to deliver another successful year," chief executive, Harry Hill, added.
Shares nevertheless have dropped by 6.3 per cent today despite the upbeat statement, which comes after Foxtons similarly released a positive set of results yesterday.