Thursday: Warning on Purplebricks sales Friday: Boss cashes in £340, 000 shares

A SENIOR manager at online estate agent Purplebricks has cashed in more than £340,000 of shares in the company – a day after an expert warned it is not selling houses quickly enough.

Joby Russell, who joined Purplebricks as chief marketing officer last year, sold 243,618 shares for £341,065.20, or 140p each.

The sale, on Friday, came after Anthony Codling, an analyst at investment bank Jefferies, said of Purplebricks in a note on Thursday: ‘They sell houses, but not as quickly as we’d expect’.

Codling, who last month said ‘whether people buy or sell their homes through Purplebricks, we don’t recommend that they buy shares in the company’, has a price target of 94p for the stock.

In last week’s note, he said: ‘Should the relatively new and innovative model stumble the share price may follow. However, should the model bed down and sales accelerate ahead of our expectations, the shares may not currently reflect the true value.’

Russell (pictured) was able to buy the 243,618 shares on July 12 for 12.93p each – a total of £31,500 – by exercising so-called options.

The firm revealed Russell’s sale in a statement to the stock market yesterday. Codling said he was ‘surprised’, as Russell had described the company as ‘the UK’s most remarkable estate agency and one of the country’s fastest growing businesses’.

In a new note titled ‘Selling shares quicker than they sell homes’, Codling said the holding of ten days was shorter than the average of 14 days within which Purplebricks claims to find buyers for the houses it sells.

A spokesman said Russell, whose previous post was at price comparison website confused.com, ‘retains a substantial interest in the business going forward’.

Purplebricks was launched in 2014 and floated in December 2015 priced at 100p a share.

Shares rose to as high as 175p in May but closed at 140p last night, down 0.25p on the day, making it worth around £340m.

Star fund manager Neil Woodford is the company’s biggest shareholder, owning a 28.6pc stake through Woodford Investment Management.