Did alt data cause Purplebricks’ 7% share price fall?

Daryl Smith, CFA, Head of Research (London)

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And could one have reached the same conclusion with less effort?

Earlier this month an analyst at Jeffries published a report regarding online estate agent Purplebricks which was at odds with the CEO’s comments. Specifically, the CEO had stated that 88% of Purplebricks’ customers sold their homes within 10 months. Conversely, Jeffries suggested the actual figure may be closer to 51%. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Purplebricks shares fell 7% on the day the report was published.

At Neudata we found this event particularly interesting given Jeffries’ claim was backed up by tracking properties listed by Purplebricks against sales data on the UK government’s Land Registry database.

The use of this alt data source has been heavily disputed by Purplebricks management, as noted in this FT Alphaville article. Nevertheless, we thought it is worth exploring whether this data could have been found more easily, simply by searching our own datasets on the Neudata platform. See below for our results.

A more effective way to reach the same conclusion?