Zoopla Property Group has announced a £25.4m profit in the 12 months to September despite increased market competition.

Earlier this year, the firm saw a decline in UK Agency partners following the launch of rival onthemarket.co.uk.

After announcing the loss of 106 UK Agency members in April, the group confirmed that the rate of losses has “slowed significantly” by May, after which five consecutive months of growth followed.

Zoopla had 12,702 agency partners at the end of September, compared to 16,373 a year earlier.

Zoopla acquired home services comparison website uSwitch in June this year for £160m to broaden its offering to customers.

However, the acquisition of uSwitch left the firm with a net debt of £93.2m, after reporting a cash balance of £31m last year.

Alex Chesterman, Founder & CEO of Zoopla, said: “We have made great progress towards our vision of becoming the consumer champion at the heart of the home with the acquisition of uSwitch, the leading home services comparison platform in the UK.

“Traffic to our property platform remained strong with high levels of user engagement, and we recently passed the significant milestone of over seven million downloads of our property apps.”