Zoopla CEO Alex Chesterman To Receive £19 Million
Daily Mail and estate agent Countrywide and General Trust are partial owners of Britain’s second most popular online real estate portal Zoopla. The website which was launched in 2008 specializes in providing up to date information on area trends and stats, sold house prices and real time estimates for domestic properties in the United Kingdom and continues to grow in popularity.
The website’s founder Alex Chesterman recently announced that he is selling his 4% stake in the company which is expected to bring him around £11 million. The leadership team at Zoopla recently made changes to some of their bonus policies in an effort to retain employees, in particular Chesterman. The new policy will result in Chesterman receiving an additional £19 million in shares and an additional £7.5 million if he can consistently boost shareholder returns during the next four years.
Zoopla has impressive numbers as the total number of advertisers is now at 16,131 and the current number of properties on the website is at 882,000. The website continues to generate a significant amount of online traffic with an average of 45.6 million monthly visits and over 50% of this traffic comes from smartphone devices.
Zoopla has done extremely well over the past few months of trading and has established itself as a leader in the real estate market and the website’s biggest competitor continues to be Rightmove, which currently holds the number one spot for being the biggest and most popular online real estate website in the UK.
Mike Evans, Zoopla’s chairman believes that Chesterman’s role in the future growth of the company is extremely important. In a statement, Evans said that Alex Chesterman “will be instrumental in delivering enhanced shareholder value over the long term. Alex has authorisation to sell down circa 25 per cent of his holding, but will retain at least 75 per cent (£7.8m) so has plenty of skin in the game and remains aligned to shareholders’ interests in our view.”
Zoopla recently launched a new software tool called “find a pro” which will enable users to quickly find utility workers and tradesmen to assist them with their real estate projects. The new tool has helped to significantly boost the website’s smarthphone traffic as reports suggest that traffic has increased by 11% after the tool went live. Shareholders have been willing to accept the new policies that allow Alex Chesterman to receive a substantial bonus because they believe that with his guidance Zoopla will be able to grow at a rapid pace within the next four years and increase its shareholder value.
