OnTheMarket withdraws guidance, warns of short-term Covid-19 impacts

(Sharecast News) - Online property portal OnTheMarket withdrew its full-year guidance on Wednesday as it warned of short-term impacts from the Covid-19 pandemic.
OnTheMarket said it was "difficult" to predict the evolving impact of the outbreak in the current environment and opted to suspend financial guidance "until greater clarity exists".

The AIM-listed company also said it had selectively furloughed a fifth of its staff, cut wages to its remaining employees by 20%, reduced its pool of contract IT workers, slashed its marketing effort and agreed "deferments of creditor payments" - all in an effort to conserve the ?8.5m it has in the bank.

OTM also warned that it was at risk of a reduced income stream after cutting its agent fees until June by a third, but stated that the crisis was an opportunity for its portal and claimed that the crisis had the potential to lead to a "large-scale and widespread re-evaluation" by agents.

Chief executive Clive Beattie said: "Agents across the country are reconsidering their portal marketing choices and we continue to engage with agents attracted by our unique agent ownership model and our strategic commitment, as the agents' portal, to a policy of low, fair pricing, both in the short term and sustainably into the future.

"The steps we are taking to conserve cash and to assist agents are appropriate to ensure we weather the current crisis and come through ready to provide our customers a market-leading, fairly priced portal service."

As of 1335 BST, OnTheMarket shares were down 7.38% at 30.10p.