Rightmove to consider sweetened offer from Australian group

Rightmove has said it would “consider” a third £6.1 billion offer from a Melbourne-based property company after rejecting two previous proposals.
Rea Group’s latest indicative offer — 341p in cash and 0.0422 new Rea shares — values the UK property website at 770p a share.
Andrew Fisher, Rightmove chairman, said: “The board will carefully consider the increased proposal, together with its financial advisers.”
Rightmove had rejected the previous offers as “opportunistic” and “fundamentally undervaluing” the company and its prospects.
Rightmove shares rose 2.6 per cent, or 17½p, to 692p.
Rea said it was ready to engage immediately with the Rightmove board.
Rightmove has an 86 per cent share of the house search market in the UK. It has high margins: for every £1 spent by estate agents and developers with Rightmove, it made 69p of profit in the first half. About 19,000 estate agents and developers advertise on the portal.
Its shares have underperformed the market over the past year amid fears that it could face increased competition from OnTheMarket, a rival that was acquired by CoStar, the American property group, for £99 million towards the end of last year.
Rea is 61 per cent owned by News Corp, the publisher of The Times. It was founded in 1995 and has a market capitalisation of A$26 billion (£13 billion). It intends to apply for a secondary listing of all of its ordinary shares in London, which would enable trading in its shares on both the London Stock Exchange and the Australian Securities Exchange.
Shares in Rea fell A$5, or 2.5 per cent, to A$194 on the Australian stock exchange.
Under the City’s takeover code, Rea has until 5pm on September 30 to make a firm offer or walk away.