Market report: Investors decide Rightmove chief’s departure is wrong move

When a company’s boss leaves, how the share price moves is a pretty good indicator of whether he or she was liked by investors.

On that basis, there can be no doubt the City was a fan of Nick McKittrick, the chief executive of Rightmove, who is quitting after 16 years at the online property group, having taken the business into contention for a spot on the FTSE 100.

McKittrick, one of the executives who founded Rightmove in 2000, will step down at the May AGM, when Peter Brooks-Johnson, who is at present chief operating officer, will take over.

Analysts said because the company had promoted from in-house the transition would be smooth.

But investors were clearly concerned and shares fell 181.44p to 4063.56p.

And it wasn’t the annual results, unveiled alongside the management announcement, which spooked them.

Revenues surged 15% last year to £220 million, with underlying profits up by the same margin to £166 million, prompting Shore Capital to call them “very strong results”.

Steve Clayton, fund manager at Hargreaves Lansdown, said he was sorry to see McKittrick — a keen cyclist — ride off and added “the market shared the sentiment”.

“But Rightmove are so well dug into their dominant market position that we doubt that McKittrick’s departure will rock the boat for long,” he added.

The FTSE 100, down 18.82 points at 7252.55, continued to drift lower after yesterday afternoon’s slide, with banks the biggest laggards after results from RBS and Standard Chartered.

Micro Focus, the software giant, was among the fallers after weak figures emerged from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the US giant run by Meg Whitman from which Micro Focus is buying the software assets for £6.6 billion.

Revenues at the division — soon to be part of Micro Focus — were down 9% to $721 million (£575 million), though operating profits were up at $154 million.