I wrote a long post about Rightmove's IPO back in August. It now looks like with the crazy bubble in UK classifieds it may fetch as much as £400M in a spring offering. That will make struggling owners like Countrywide very happy - in fact their stake in Rightmove could be as much as 20% of their current market cap.
This bubble has seen the UK media companies, scared witless of online eating their lunch, buying up the likes of findaproperty and primelocation for some very generous valuations over the last 18 months. But at £400M (at least 50x 2006 earnings), Rightmove is probably too steep for them.
Rightmove is a clear number one - as Alexa shows - but how much of this is due to expensive TV campaigns and its closed relationship with its estate agent owners?
It will be great - if they do make it to IPO without a scared media baron diving in - to have another UK internet stock. Although not a very sexy one.
PS 2 years on - check out Zoopla for House prices and UK property value estimates
