news 7
One year on as a plc and the boards are flying
Bournemouth-based property group Martin & Co has completed its first year as a plc and reports fantastic results. Revenue was up 16% to £5 million; operating profit was up 28% to £1.8m; operating margin was up from 33% to 36%; management services fees were up 13% to £3.5m; and a strong balance sheet showed a net-cash position of £4.8m at the end of 2013.
There are now more than 30,600 properties under management, 97 offices offering an estate agency service – including Southampton City, Woolston, Winchester, Gosport, New Milton, Portsmouth and Ringwood in the Solent – and five regional franchise managers in post.
Chief executive Ian Wilson said: “We’ve been extremely pleased with these results. Being a plc company is a trademark of quality in business and also gives us credibility in our industry. The title
builds trust and credibility with our investors and franchise owners.“
Wilson’s background is property, right back to his degree and working as a fair rent officer setting rents under the provisions of the 1977 Rent Act.
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In the early 1990s the housing market slumped. Selling and moving would have required a cash injection, therefore people let properties if their circumstances meant they could not sit tight: “This
was the start of buy to let, because lenders began to relax their rules and would allow mortgages to continue on these properties, and new mortgages, especially for rental investment, started to appear.“
Wilson worked as national lettings manager for Your Move, then moved to Connells as its first lettings director where he met Richard Martin. “I was fascinated by Richard’s stories about the power of franchising. I asked him how many franchises he had sold and he said
almost 200. I then asked him how many he still had trading and he said 60.
“The majority of the early franchises failed because of insufficiently rigorous selection, a lack of close support and infrastructure. That was my first lesson. While a good business system is always a good business system, if the franchisor is relatively new, they will lack the resources to ensure that new franchisees fully understand and religiously apply the system, and also the franchisor may be tempted to take on board new franchisees who are not suitable.
“The first change I made when I was offered the MD role by Richard was to increase franchisee support.“
The move into estate agency was prompted by a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats business review in late 2011 and 2012: “Many franchisees were aghast that we were thinking of stopping being a specialist letting-only agency, but the cyclical resurgence in the housing market in 2013-14 has seen 122 out of 158 franchisees now offering an estate agency service.“
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info@halo-ce.co.uk THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH CENTRAL – JUNE 2014
www.halo-ce.co.uk www.businessmag.co.uk
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