All right, good morning. Thank you for coming, everybody, and welcome to the Q&A part. I believe that you have all seen the presentation and the RNS from this morning, obviously. So let me just open with saying that we're very proud over a strong set of results for last year. 10% revenue growth, very good drop-through to profit, as usual. Stable membership, incredible amount of consumers taking to the Rightmove brand and platform, also, as usual. It was, of course, a property market that started out on the weak side, let's say, quite a lot of anxiety, and it really improved throughout the year, in terms of sentiment, the rate stabilizing, and anticipation of obviously coming down.
We saw that in the indicators of different kinds, and it has really translated into 2024 as well, with everything literally up in the first six or seven weeks of this year in terms of listings being very strong, demand being very strong, sales agreed being very strong, mid-teens. So the sentiment out in the market is good, and obviously, you know, more volumes is generally a good thing. And we'll come back to more of that in terms of predictions. But the outlook for 2024 looks good, favorable. And as you know, we continue to really invest in innovation, in products, catering, and thriving, and literally all kinds of market conditions. So we're hopeful for 2024 and definitely the outlook beyond that.
But with that, I'm not gonna repeat the rest of the presentation, so, I think we can jump straight over to Q&A. We have Alison and Ruaridh here, obviously, as well.
Well.
Hi, so William Packer, BNP Paribas, and three questions, please. Firstly, we're heading into a period where there's probably gonna be a lot more scrutiny on consumer engagement. We can see from the US where there's a battle going on, there's lots of debates around what metric to look at: Google, Comscore, Apptopia, SimilarWeb, visits, minutes spent, bounce rate. And there's lots of different things being said. Could you kinda set the scene for us, what you think is the right metric for us to look at, or metrics, and where your share stands today, and just sort of set the scene for us versus the competitive set?
Secondly, the temptation is to talk all about counterfactuals, but let's put that to one side and think about if you were to have a new challenger on those key metrics around traffic, agent penetration, etc. What changes would concern you? When do we start to get worried about things like leads? And obviously, you know, there's an extent to which quite a lot's under your control. You can change the conversion rate of leads, etc., but, you know, what changes should we look to as a source of concern? And then finally, when it comes to agent formation, it feels like we've been talking about that for a while and how it's been held back. What do you think the market needs to get back to agent formation? We're through the online agent headwinds.
It looks like there's some green shoots of recovery in the end market. Is that sufficient that perhaps at the back end of the year we could start to see some agent formation or is something structurally changed? Thank you.
All right. I will start with the first one.
Okay.
Look, indeed, there are a number of different, you know, sources when it comes to figuring out traffic out there, and some of that we happily leave to you. But obviously, we look at these things very closely across different sources. And generally speaking, it's there are two things which are important. One is the volume, and how we are performing on the volume. And when you again, when you sit at a massive amount of volume already, where over 85% of it comes directly to our brand and our platform seeking out the Rightmove brand, we think it's very hard to dislodge that kind of position. The other one is, so from a quantity perspective, we feel very confident about continuing to have that sort of quantity of leads in the market.
And as a matter of fact, we develop more and more consumer products as well, and driving engagement. So, the Mortgage in Principle is a good example, right? It comes both from the existing traffic, but it was obviously a way to engage further with the traffic and membership that we have on the consumer side. Which leads me to the other piece, which is quality. And, what you actually get out of that traffic is incredibly important. And, we have talked about and talked about again the enormous sort of factor that we have in terms of that engagement, what it actually produces for customers, you know, somewhere between five and nine times the value for customers coming from our consumer base.
So we're very good because of the number of products we have, the amount of visibility and data, and how we can connect that between consumers and customers, the right time of the cycle, the right time of interest, the right time of the process, etc. So, we feel I think your second question was around, you know, concern around these pieces. I will flip it around and say, the question is how excited we can be about it. We've, you know, laid out and our strategy is to build on this strong position of both quantity and quality and actually deepen further all of the product information, the seamless connectivity, and ease of doing things between both consumers and customers. So, we sit in a great position, and our strategy remains very intact.
Let's continue to build on that strength, right? I think, from a moat perspective, it just makes it even harder to try to, in a way, butt in, right, when you have much smaller traffic, you have lesser quality of that traffic, and when the traffic that you very likely add is also of lesser quality, right, because it's not traffic that has sought you out in the first place, the way consumers do with Rightmove.
So, I think just adding to that for me, so clearly market share, huge as a as a metric in itself, which is our immense moat, is one of our, our key metrics. And to your point about counterfactual and, and new entrants, I mean, just sort of maybe stepping back from this a bit and thinking about some of the themes that we've seen over the last few months, there has been a lot of noise about, you know, will there won't there be a head-to-head marketing battle? And I think some raised eyebrows at our position that, you know, we, we, we market our brand, and we have 20 years of history of consumers turning to Rightmove first.
But I think if you actually dig into that, the reason that for us, the biggest return on investment is to continue to innovate for the consumer is by leveraging that position. We have 86% market share, which gives us a treasure trove of data about what consumers are doing when they come to Rightmove, knowing that they have come to us first, not through search. So therefore, it would make no sense for us to go off and start buying Google SEO-driven traffic. We've got the traffic. Now the question is how do we create the most advantage for ourselves by, by leveraging that traffic? So we know our customers, we know what they're doing on the site.
We have a database of over 8 million unique users who have opted into marketing, close to 8.5 million unique individuals who have chosen to receive marketing from us. Over the last year, we've built up 3 million enhanced profiles, so we now know what their financial status is. We know the time period over which they want to move. We know whether they're an owner, whether they need a mortgage, whether they want to sell, whether they're, say, buying a second home, whether they're moving from being a renter to being a homeowner. We can match all of that permissioned data up with what they're then doing on the site, whether they have engaged with our Mortgage in Principle process. Are they using our Track a Property tool, for example? Are they using the Stamp Duty Calculator?
Where is it that they're looking to move? All of that is data and insight that we can then use to pass on to our agent customers, which is why we can create the sort of outcomes that Johan talked about: 9 times more vendor mandates won on Rightmove than on our closest competitor, which incidentally is not on the market. 7 times more homes rented. 6 times more homes sold. You know, all of those outcomes derive from the products that we build and the way that consumers use the site. So why would we blitz money on tactical marketing campaigns when we can create so much more value by innovating for the consumer, which keeps them on the site, which then maintains those sort of outcomes for agents?
So market share, I think is absolutely key for us, but clearly, leads and the quality of leads are what drives outcomes for agents, and that is also a critical metric for us. But it's engagement stats, right, that we are measuring. It's not traffic numbers because traffic tells you nothing about the quality of the traffic and the quality of the outcome. And then to your point on agent formation, I know we have been talking about that for a while, and we've seen a very different set of market conditions in 2023 than we saw in 2022 and 2021. I would hope that with a more benign macro, you know, 2024 would see more new agents having the confidence to set themselves up.
But I would say that, in agent land, because there is such a lag between winning a mandate and that turning to cash, it is still difficult for new agents while that period remains at 4-6 months, you know, to fund yourself throughout that gap. So I think it will probably start slowly, even if we are to see more new agents. The recovery from a more benign macro will probably be seen first in development numbers than in agent numbers.
Yeah. Thanks. Just a quick thought. You talk about this 85% number of organic traffic.
Mm-hmm.
If we put it another way, how much traffic do you buy? In a way, aren't you underselling because actually, you don't buy 15% of traffic, or maybe that's wrong and you do?
No, we don't.
No. Correct. We stated as an over and again, we take that as where the indication is consumers are looking actively for us. CRM, emails, app notifications, and a couple of other smaller sources where we have a relationship already and whereby consumers come in basically fills out the rest, right? It's an extraordinarily small amount of paid in the rest of that one.
Thanks very much.
Kieran here to end up, right?
Thanks. Yeah, it's Ciaran Donnelly from Berenberg. A couple from me. Just in terms of the ARPA range, I think people have picked up in your comments, Alison, that we should expect maybe you'd fall in the lower end of that range. I guess maybe could you outline a scenario where you, in fact, actually come in the top end of the range or why we should expect you to be in that bottom end of the range? And then secondly, I think agent churn was 11%, slightly ticked up from 10% last year. Could you just give us a kind of common theme in terms of why people do leave the platform? Is it that they go out of business or they go to competitors or just kinda give the sense of what is the real driver of that churn? Thanks.
Yeah, sure. So on the ARPA point, first of all, I would remind you that it's a higher range. So this year, we, we increased the range from what had been GBP 95-105 of growth to 110- sorry, GBP 100-110. So the lower half of that range would have been the, the upper half of, of last year's range. But we tend to be reasonably cautious at this stage of the year. Just taking you back to this time last year, we also guided to the bottom half of the GBP 95-105 range, and then we increased guidance for ARPA three times during the year last year. So there is an element of that. We're, we're early in the year. It's an election year. It's difficult to have full visibility on how agents and, and developers will behave.
We are also, of course, coming off the back of very strong growth in 2023, with the new home developers in particular. So just year-on-year growth, again, you know, it's we don't have full visibility on it. What I would say is that we're in the middle of our second of four cohorts of agents to go through their annual contract renewal and pricing process. That is all going completely normally. There are two more to go, so we'll see that. But it's always difficult at the beginning of the year to know how much discretionary upgrades we will see and discretionary product purchase. So it's nothing more than a bit of caution and the strength of 2023's growth that's driving the guidance.
And then on churn, so yeah, I mean, I don't think I'd call a 1% tick up much of a change in retention. But to the extent that agents leave, it's either agents leaving the market, retiring. A lot of them are small family businesses, and that is the primary driver. Then sadly, some do go out of business. That's, that has always been those two things have always been the driver of churn. It's very rarely churn from one platform to another. Sorry, Joe.
Thank you. Joseph Barnet-Lamb from UBS. Maybe firstly from me. So new home, sort of membership slowed a bit at the back end of last year, yet in your sort of remarks, I think you referred to sort of expecting it to be up in 2024. So could you give a little bit of color with regards to what's sort of going on there? Then, secondly, with regards to, maybe we'll start with that one. Sorry. That's okay.
Sure. Yes, you're right. We saw the number of developers at December was lower than the numbers we reported at the half-year. Undeniably, we saw a bit of a slowdown, particularly in the fourth quarter. I think development numbers, as I said, they're always quicker to recover when the macro picks up than agent formation. So we would expect to see, you know, in a year in which, as Johan said earlier, all of the stats are pointing to a better year for the market than 2023's was, we'd expect to see a recovery in development numbers, and that's what's behind the guidance.
And then maybe building off that with regards to sort of the agency formation. What is baked into your guidance? So when you say a slight decline in membership, you're still forecasting negative agency numbers. Is that effectively ongoing churn at the same levels and still low agency formation, or are you within that expecting any uptick at all in new agent formation through 2024?
So the guidance on agent numbers is net guidance. We will expect to see some joiners, but this is really all about an absence or a lack of new joiners. The levers, agency levers in 2023, and you'll see it in the deck, are actually lower than they were last year. So it's less about people actually leaving the market, and it's far more just a question of new agent formation, and that's what's behind the guidance. We would expect to see agent number declines offset by development numbers, but as I say, it's difficult at this stage of the year to know fully how it'll play out.
Within the guidance, you're not expecting new agent formation to accelerate through 2024?
No. No.
Thank you.
Just to quickly build on that point, and again, this was in the materials, right? If you look at a couple of years back, there was much higher volumes of leavers before pandemic, right? And that's actually come down. So I think it's possibly just a narrowing of the spread between joiners and leavers, but overall, it's a very, very stable picture. One has to remember that. I think the other thing which is worth mentioning here, and we had it in a couple of places in the deck and also referred to during our investor day, there are exciting newer segments of the UK property market, right? So housing associations, if we talk about new homes developers, for example, they typically operate on slightly different, you know, budgets, marketing spend levels than many of the professional developers.
We have identified that. We've talked to them. We learned, we've just launched a specific package for them. So great, strong tech kit, pickup already with about 50 of them in the bag, right? Similarly, the build-to-rent sector, which is small, only about 2% of the rental market today, but predicted to continue to grow very strongly. We think it has long runway, and it was part of our strategic thinking and engagement already in that sector. That also drove us to join up forces with HomeViews, right? So there's a lot of information and opportunity from our perspective and actually growth in a market as well if you look at overall housing options in a way.
Excellent. Thank you.
Gareth.
Yeah, two from me. You touched on pricing discussions, in terms of Kieran's answer, but just could you expand a little bit on how that went tail-ender last year and into this year? And are you seeing any evidence that agents are kinda trying to use the change of competitive landscape in those negotiations, or is it just kinda not on the radar for them at this stage? And then secondly, commercial, good momentum on the customer winside, so would be good to get a little more color around that, but and your sort of expectations into next year or sorry, into 2024. But also from a competitive perspective, can you talk a little bit about are you seeing any change in how your competitors are acting in that market? Thank you.
Sure. Okay. Well, look, I think as you're aware, we put about a third of the agent base through a price increase every year, and we are very steady and mindful about the magnitude of that increase. And that has long been historical behavior on our part. It has not changed. The conversations, as I say, were in two out of four, and they are entirely normal. I think most agents will see pricing as a reflection of value, and we remain focused on driving the sorts of multiples of outcomes for Rightmove's customers as we talked to you about at the CMD, you know? And to reiterate, those outcomes and the multiples, I think, are really impressive.
You know, a Rightmove agent subscriber wins 9 times more vendor mandates than those of our nearest competitor, 7 times more properties rented, 6 times more properties sold. You know, the list goes on. There's a whole slide on it in our CMD. And that, though, that is the conversation that we have with agents. It's about value. And that remains the case, and the conversations haven't changed, and the outcome hasn't changed. With respect to commercial, I mean, yes, we have added some customers, and we've increased ARPA a little bit. I mean, our commercial agents continue to see value from listing on the platform because we have the largest share of all of the digital platforms. Zoopla is next, but they are about half the share that we have. And then LoopNet is the third.
That has been reasonably stable, and we set out a picture for you of what that looks like at the CMD, and we've seen very little change. I think it's too early since then, Gareth, really, to call out any particular change. Even our own growth, as we said, 2024 would be a year of investment for commercial rather than one of any meaningful revenue acceleration. So for us, the progress that we're looking to make actually is in hiring the people that we want to hire to continue to build a bespoke commercial site. So that's what we're focused on.
And in terms of that hiring process, that's going well and.
It's going well. Yeah, it is. I mean, as you know, and Johan talked about this, oh, I think in November, you know, we've done a lot of work on Rightmove as an employer brand, but we're a really attractive tech employer. And we will add across the business close to 200 heads this year, you know, the vast majority of which three out of four of those will be in the product team. So we are an attractive place to work if you're in tech.
I think across just to add on, across the strategic growth areas, commercial, rental services, and then mortgages and financial services, I'd really characterize it as one, it's early from our medium-term ambitions here, but it's truly all guns blazing in the early phases. Great additions to the team, great progress on the product, lots of pathfinding being done and sort of swatted away, and good results throughout it as well on or ahead of our plans as they are.
Rahul.
Rahul from HSBC, I have three questions. I mean, in terms of your competitors, they have probably seen uptick in number of agent formation. Could you give a sense of how the agents are thinking for the uptick in terms of product upgrade, which is probably a little opportunity cost for you with the third platform? Are you seeing a bit of less product upgrades and other agents thinking, "Okay, we can have third platform, and then let's try it out"? Just want to understand your thought on that. Second, in terms of the broker channel, I noticed that you still have only one broker channel financially. I mean, obviously, it's probably a bit slower than what you would have thought given there are 5,000-plus brokers you mentioned in CMD.
So, just want to understand the kind of ramp-up you're seeing in broker channel and whether kind of discussions and when you could see meaningful ramp-up. And final question on marketing margins. I mean, you're expecting about 70% margin last year reflecting headcount increase. Not sure what is the expected marketing budget you're penciling in for next year. Given the cost of acquisition, do you probably potentially could be seeing upside risk to margins? Are you already penciling in higher marketing costs next year? Thank you.
Yeah, sure. I can start with the first one. Oops. Sorry. Maybe it's number two as well. The story in terms of our product and package uptick is extremely strong. We put in a note as you probably saw that our own expectations for Optimiser Edge. We're taking up those numbers. It started really well out of the gate in the second half, and it just continued to accelerate. So really good reception in the market. No signs of anyone taking a different view on it. And I think you have to consider a little bit where competition is trying or, you know, signing up. You've seen the things that have been announced. It's a very clear statement around continuing to do business with Rightmove, and then there's some other changes, right?
So, we have seen nothing on that. I think the second question on mortgages, broker channel, etc., yes, it's early days in terms of getting to the full potential of the broker agent part of this. We are seeing very good, you know, results, but it's still very small. What is important to remember, though, or what I would highlight is that the main MIP flow together with our lender partner Nationwide is growing extremely strong at the moment. So, while rates haven't started to come down yet and the stability or higher for longer might sit there a little bit, given the overall sentiment and the various obvious now sort of pent-up demand from last year coming into the market, we're extremely happy to see the numbers in that one.
On marketing, Rahul, I think you've seen sort of steady state spend from us over the last 4-5 years, about GBP 15 million or so a year, pretty much all on brand. I would say we'll spend maybe GBP 1 million or so more in 2024, pretty immaterial change. Yeah, remaining largely brand. I know it I know it within the margin guidance that you've seen. Marcus.
Hi. I'm Marcus Diebel, JP Morgan. Can you come back to this OPA growth? I don't want to split hairs too much, yeah, but the market does care. So we'd basically say we're gonna be at the lower end of the OPA range, but we don't say we're gonna be at the lower end of the revenue growth range.
Mm-hmm.
Is that just a function of having really enough potential in other areas? I just tried to square being cautious on one thing but not.
Sure.
Not on the group.
Yeah.
and appreciate again it's splitting hairs, but, but the market does care, I think. The second question is for, for Johan. I guess we, we all attended, Scout24 Capital Markets Day. They make a lot out of, the Homeowner Hub, yeah? I think what was interesting is that they were revealing that a large percentage of homeowners, directly move into conversions and, and bring listings. So what, it's early stage, but how does it actually, drive your thinking about doing potentially something more and, and, greater initiatives in, in that area than what Rightmove currently does? That would be interesting. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Marcus. So on the ARPA growth points, I mean, I don't want you to make too big a deal of this. It's a higher range. So, you know, that's where that's how you square to the revenue piece. It would have been the upper end of last year's range. I think maybe breaking down the number a little bit, if you look at the components of 2023's ARPA growth, agency added GBP 78, new homes added GBP 312. I mean, there was a huge difference in the relative contribution of agency and new homes. For 2024, I would expect to see a bit more from agency and less from new homes because year-on-year growth on that sort of magnitude is just much harder to sustain.
Overall, somewhere between—I mean, our guidance range remains 100-110, but as things stand right now, we expect somewhere in the 100-105. There's no real impact on revenue because that would have been the upper end of last year's range. And remember that the core business, so agency and new homes, is the major driver of revenue growth, particularly in 2024, which is an investment year.
All right. Okay. And Marcus, on number two, so I think it's, in a way, it's interesting to see. I think there are a lot of parallels between how we operate, how we think about the future between Scout and Hemnet, obviously. Oh, sorry. Hemnet. Hemnet as well and Rightmove, but a lot of good conversations between the companies. And I think if you go back a little bit to our investor day and the strategic model that we outlined and how we see tons of opportunity to digitize literally every single little process that there is in this industry, on the consumer side, right, we call out the model called FATML. So find, afford, transact, move and lifecycle.
Lifecycle, you can call out sort of at the bottom end, and that's maybe the home ownership, right? So we're logically moving ourselves down in those steps, right? And we think there's a logical order to do this. However, on and that's where you see the strength and how much we're building now around mortgages, for example. We're increasingly building tools to assist the consumers as sort of a home moving journey assistant, right? And we get one product example in the presentation, as well around sentiment queries is about how you organize that whole process. So great uptick that will lead to further stickiness, frequency of use, consumer love, which eventually, obviously, turns into revenue on the customer side. But that's on the sales side of residential.
On the rental piece or lettings, our Lead to Keys proposition actually is already covering large parts of all of those steps, right, including home ownership, right, where, or at least aspects of it, right, where we sell ancillary products as part of that, moving into a new tenancy. And that's already a pretty fully baked suite, and we're obviously now in full rollout mode of that one. So I would say that there are a lot of alignments in thoughts, in terms of addressing fully all the needs from someone already in their homes. There's more to do in the future. But we see, you know, fantastic interest in aspects of that already, which is around, for example, sustainability, energy efficiency, etc. We are building various new tools in terms of renovation calculators, right?
What kind of value could you hope to get out of your home if you do X, Y, and Z, and so forth, either to lower your running costs ongoing or again get a better price today that you decide to sell. So, from some aspects already there, from the more full-blown aspects, more to come, but quite exciting. And then, as you know, there are some structural last comment to make. There are some structurally quite different aspects of the German market versus the U.K. market, which I think has to do slightly different things from a corporate perspective.
Sorry. One minute. Sean, I can't see you properly.
Morning everyone
If you want to do HomeViews, then I'll do the rest.
Yeah. Yeah. I can do that. So, well, I'll give the general and absolutely repeat the plug, which is our five-year plans, and strategic growth opportunities are made on organic assumptions, the way we see the business, the strength that we have, and what we can do on top of it. Next to that, we will, of course, you know, consider, are there ways to move faster into one of these growth opportunities? So very much aligned with strategy. But again, that's not really new from the past. Like, I've only been here a year, so I can't fully talk to it right, but the principle hasn't changed at all. And on HomeViews specifically, I think it was a good example, right?
It's, it's really bolt-on or tuck-in, phenomenal complementary proposition next to the one that we have for built-to-rent already, with consumer in mind, lots of love from the industry for what HomeViews do. And they will continue to do that, and we'll figure out how to offer an even more integrated, even more data-rich set of products to the joint customers from now on.
If I can.
More broadly on cash, Sean, so shareholders should not expect to see any material change in returns, as a result of M&A. Any M&A that we do will be small. I wouldn't characterize HomeViews as the first of the year. There's definitely not a calendar. I mean, we'll return close to GBP 200 million to shareholders this year across the dividend and the buyback and no real impact from M&A. I mean, I would just point to the strength of cash generation in the business. You know, cash conversion from profit was 104% in 2023, and all of it goes back with the exception of, you know, some liquidity buffer that we maintain, and that policy remains unchanged.
Perfect. Thank you. And could I ask a quick follow-up? Just on risk appetite with M&A, say you were sort of looking at all the different startups in property in the U.K., and you saw some interesting ones, but maybe not necessarily interesting, could be a success, but maybe slightly higher risk. Would you take a punt, or would you see how that developed?
We're generally not in the punt-taking business, I would say, as a company and as a general, you know, principle. Having said that, I think what we've laid out for ourselves is I wouldn't even characterize it as, in terms of risk, but I would characterize it as in a general forward lean. We think we can do more from the base that we have, right? And that's why we even announced the investments that we have come out with. Again, a reminder, we think, you know, when we add up all the different opportunities at some unspecified point in time, we're talking about somewhere between GBP 1.5 billion and GBP 2 billion TAM in revenue, right? So there's a lot to go for. Software will continue to eat lunch, and we're one of the players that should absolutely help catalyze that.
So, it's more in the context of that, you know, considering, again, is there a faster route to get capability or knowledge or something that is really interesting but might have, you know, challenges to scale or reach, or have distribution, right? And some of those assets, we obviously sit on. So I think it's an openness to it, but again, it's certainly not the default of our plan.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Pete.
Hey. It's Pete from Morgan Stanley. So one more question on the traffic. Can you give some kind of rough ballpark, like, what percentage of your traffic is direct? So not, not organic, but either comes through the app or comes consumers directly type in Rightmove.co.uk to their browser, so not through a search engine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's back to the numbers that we talked about before. And again, you have to both consider the different sources and how they're composed. None of them are perfect, in a way. And obviously, the interpretation between them. But well over 85%, even more if you sort of dismissed the cost of it, right, where we're not paying are on last-click attribution coming by typing in Rightmove, right? Now, how people have passed themselves to that could be, again, a vast proportion of it is typing in directly. A growing number of them are using the app, which is a very direct way of accessing it, obviously. Others can indeed be searching, but they come back and actually type in Rightmove as the way to actually use our site.
All right. Thank you.
Hi. Ciaran Donnelly from Berenberg here with a question in regards to new homes developers' ad offering going forward. So prior historically, sort of what we've seen in 2023, in a weaker environment, new homes developers have spent more on advertising to sweat their inventory even more. But in an improving macro environment, what gives you more confidence that they'll continue to sustain and improve their ad spend even further going forward given sort of, in an improving environment that there's less need to advertise as much?
Yep. So all of the developers continue to list all of their development developments with us, and that remained the case even through COVID, and of course, it remained the case last year. What determines the level of spend, really, from one year to the next is the pace of sale. So if you go back to 2021, the structural shortage of housing here means that when demand changes quickly and increases quickly, the developers get very forward-sold. You know, they're selling everything off plan. And therefore, despite the fact that the developers continue to list everything, those properties are on our site for a very short period of time. And because our charging model is per development per month, if everything is selling out, for example, within the first month, that's one month of revenue.
In a year like 2023, they were both spending more on product, and developments were taking much longer to sell, which meant that on a per development per month basis, revenue from the developers just naturally increased. So in a year where demand starts to pick up again, you would expect to see their need to market reduce. It won't be as acute as it was in 2023. So you would expect to see a drop in things like digital email campaigns that they run via us. They just don't need to do that when the pace of sales has increased. They tend to all want to spend on products like the Advanced Development Listing because it showcases their development really well. They want to present their developments in the best possible way, which points to continued use of product.
But then the duration of the listing on the site would tend to naturally drop as well. And so those are the drivers of new homes offer. Is that clear?
Yeah. That's great. Thanks.
Rahul, sorry.
I have a follow-up question. In terms of could we discuss, like, where are we with Optimiser Edge in terms of the product penetration versus the previous? Are you seeing a similar kind of ramp-up, or is it probably slower than typical ramp-ups? And could you also touch about, Optimiser, sorry, Essential Extra and also basically Agent Accelerator package, basically where are we in terms of, you know, kind of product penetration levels and where you're seeing that, please? Thanks.
Yeah. Sure. So on Optimiser Edge, I mean, the target that we put out was to get to about 1,200 agents on that pack by the end of 2024. We'll get there more quickly than that, I think, as Johan already said. There's very strong appetite for that package, and upgrades have been progressing well. So I would expect to see us report that number more quickly. Essential Extra and so as a reminder, the rationale for the introduction of that pack was to allow agents on the Essential pack a way of trying different products and encouraging them to use products in a way that agents on Essential don't. It's still very small. We have about 320 agents on the Essential Extra pack, but we don't necessarily see it. That's not a steady state for them.
You know, Essential Extra is a stepping stone up the package ladder, and so we will do all we can to encourage them to move up. And then Agent Accelerator, that is, there are a couple of hundred agents on that, again. And as a reminder, this is an introductory pack for very early-stage agents, bearing in mind that a lot of them go out of business in their first six months of operation. So what we do is we allow them to pay per listing in a way that we don't allow agents on the more traditional packages to do, typically because they have such low stock and so a package, even the entry package of Essential, is a big cash outlay for them.
But then by the time they get to four or five properties to sell economically, it makes more sense for them actually to use one of the more traditional packages. So there will never be more than a couple of hundred agents on Agent Accelerator. But as Johan said, it's a funnel into the other packages, and so we're quite happy to allow agents to use it in that way. And of course, we've given all of the questions and comments already on agent formation. We want to do everything we can to encourage new agent formation and to help them to stay in business for as long as we can.
Maybe one more point on agent and branch opportunities. I mentioned a few before with Housing Associations Agent Accelerator. Also important to remember the Lead to Keys proposition. So with this fuller software suite that we now have, we see an opportunity to go and contract quite a few lettings agencies that have not been Rightmove historically, typically because they're very small, very local. And again, they have had such strong demand versus the supply in the market that marketing hasn't been the first need. However, running a more efficient operation, particularly if you're small, is of interest. And that's exactly what we built the product for, right?
So, we see a good opportunity in terms of monetization on the existing lettings agency base but also actually increasing our base of agencies, particularly in letting space, because of that product, right? And that's been in the works for a couple of years. So I think yet another strand of growth. And maybe I'll proceed to potential question where it kind of goes across these two things, right? Once you remember, I think with ARPA, ARPA is important. There's no question around that, right? And again, when you bring but it's not so much about price. It's about value. If you provide the value, there is, you know, value or economic return. And that's exactly what we deliver, and that's why we invest in further product, right?
But the other piece around ARPA, I think, as we've outlined, over time, we intend to broaden this business, and we're gonna have revenue lines that are not directly attributable from an ARPA perspective. So again, it's ARPA is a very meaningful number, and it's a big, big component, I think, for you guys to factor now. But at the end of the day, we want absolute growth in revenue and in profit. And that sort of mix between, you know, 90% of the business in the core very directly tied to branches in ARPA today and 10% on the rest, we intend to change that, right? We laid out sort of a 75-25% split. And even within core, there are gonna be other types of elements, that are more or less direct or indirectly tied to an ARPA number.
Pete.
Pete. Yeah. Hey. It's Pete from Morgan Stanley. Kind of a technical follow-up to what Johan just said. So should we anticipate or expect you to change or add some disclosure in your reporting going forward, especially if there are revenue drivers that may or may not impact ARPA? Basically, the business mix is changing, and people, at least as far as I know, are still modeling it the old way. So should we expect changes either this year or next?
Well, you've seen a change already in that we, we now have sort of three effective sections to the P&L, which is the core business split between agency and new homes. Then we're separating out the strategic growth areas, so commercial real estate, mortgages, and the non-listings element of, of rental services. Then we have the other business units, which are data services and overseas largely. At the CMD, we gave you indicative 2-year and then subsequent 3-year CAGR guidance levels for revenue growth across all of those, and we continue to stand behind that guidance. But that is the way that we will report going forward, so you'll have a more granular P&L than you've historically had. And with respect to modeling, I, I would encourage you to change the way you model, which I think for the majority of you has been agency new homes.
It was really all about ARPA and customer numbers, which remains fine for the core business. I think you need to think about the non-ARPA elements of rental services, which this year added GBP 2 million not into ARPA but into core revenues. But we'll help you with that going forward. But you do need to, I think, change the way that you have historically modeled the other line, and separate out the three areas of commercial, mortgages, and real estate sorry, rental services. Use the 2-year CAGR numbers from the CMD deck. They remain valid, I would say, for commercial and Rentals. Use the bottom end of that range. With mortgages, we've had a phenomenal growth spurt in 2023 and expect that to remain the case for 2024, so use the top end.
But those ranges remain good. You're probably fine to keep data services and overseas as another bucket, and just to model a percentage growth rate across those combined numbers.
All right. Thanks.
Great.
Okay.
I was gonna say one more question, but we might be out of time anyway.
Out of questions.
Thank you.
Okay.
Very much for all those questions and for coming today. We look forward to continue to drive a great business and talk more as the course rolls on. Thank you.