Online estate agent Purplebricks has announced that it will be exiting the Australian and US markets after financial results showed company losses have effectively doubled to £52 million this year, including a cash burn of £90 million.

Writing as part of the AIM-listed company's 2019 financial results, Vic Darvey, group CEO at Purplebricks, commented: "We have taken the difficult decisions to exit our businesses in both Australia and the US as it is very important that we now focus our resources on the UK and Canada, where we have a strong established presence and where there are significant opportunities to grow market share and deliver profitable growth for shareholders. Both exits will be conducted in an orderly manner with the expectation they will be completed by the end of 2019."

The company blamed a slowdown in the US housing market and the high cost of marketing on its failure to break the US market.

Its share price has slumped from an annual high of £1.89 to 93p at the time of writing.

Founded in 2012, Purplebricks is a UK startup success story that shook up the British estate agency market with a primarily online service coupled with a set of local experts and a flat fee, regardless of whether the property sells or not, which tends to come in lower than the fee charged by high street estate agencies like Foxtons, Haart or Connells.

Founder and ex-group CEO Michael Bruce also left the company back in May, when former MoneySupermarket managing director Darvey took over.