{"id":267911,"date":"2025-11-07T14:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T14:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/267911\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T14:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T14:21:08","slug":"rightmove-shares-plummet-as-ai-investments-to-hit-2026-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/267911\/","title":{"rendered":"Rightmove shares plummet as AI investments to hit 2026 profit"},"content":{"rendered":"

An estate agents’ “Sold” sign is pictured outside a house in a row of terraced houses in Guildford, southern England on August 6, 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Justin Tallis | AFP | Getty Images<\/p>\n

Share of British real estate listing company Rightmove<\/a> plummeted as much as 28% on Friday after it warned of lower profit growth on the back of accelerated investments in artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Rightmove projected a operating profit growth of 3% to 5% in 2026, coming in lower than its forecast of 9% growth this year. The firm put the shrinking down to its AI investments as it upgrades internal systems and its consumer-facing app and search tools. It’s also looking at newer applications of AI, such as agents.<\/p>\n

The share move marks a new 52-week low for the firm, though it pared some losses and was last seen trading 13% lower.<\/p>\n

UBS analysts said the “strategic pivot poses important questions that the market will not yet have answers to” and moved its price target and rating for Rightmove to under review.<\/p>\n

“We do however expect a negative market reaction to the release with guidance implying a 5-19% downgrade to FY28 u\/l operating profit vs visible alpha consensus,” UBS analysts said in a research note, referring to the financial year of 2028 and financial data platform Visible Alpha.<\/p>\n

It comes amid heightened fears of an AI bubble, with U.S. technology shares extending recent losses on Thursday. Asian and European markets followed suit, before regaining some ground.<\/p>\n

“We’ve had a remarkably smooth rally given the scale of investment that’s taken place, given the uncertainty about future cash flows, and given some of those concerns about valuation,” Kiran Ganesh, multi-asset strategist at\u00a0UBS<\/a>, told CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition” on Friday.<\/p>\n

Rightmove expects its operating profit to rebound after 2028, with AI investment paying off; it is targeting a 12% increase annually by 2030.<\/p>\n

“AI is now becoming absolutely central to how we run our business and plan for the future. We are already working on a wide range of exciting AI-enabled innovations benefit of our partners and consumers, and see vast potential utilising our leading reach and connected data,” CEO Johan Svanstrom said in the update.<\/p>\n

“We are investing to accelerate our capabilities, which we are confident will create an even stronger platform and higher-growth business over time. We aim to further advance our leading digital position in the UK property ecosystem,” he added.<\/p>\n

\u2014 CNBC’s Hugh Leask contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An estate agents’ “Sold” sign is pictured outside a house in a row of terraced houses in Guildford,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,1386,161,49,48,100,968,123266,61,43083],"class_list":{"0":"post-267911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-breaking-news-markets","12":"tag-business-news","13":"tag-ca","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-markets","16":"tag-real-estate","17":"tag-rightmove-plc","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-ubs-group-ag"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}