Purplebricks announced the departure of co-founder and chief executive Michael Bruce on Tuesday.

The online estate agency said that the Board has appointed Vic Darvey to replace the outgoing chief executive.

Vic Darvey previously held the position of chief operating officer at the firm.

In the trading update, Purplebricks said that it also intends to exit the Australian market amid a disappointing performance in the region.

This was attributed to execution errors as well as a increasingly difficult market conditions.

In the UK, the firm said that despite a similarly challenging property market, the company ‘continues to out-perform the market and the Board remains confident about the future of the business.’

In Canada, trading continued to prove strong and in line with management expectations.

Purplebricks added that its US operations were also under review to assess its performance and associated risks, moving forward.

Paul Pindar, Non Executive Chairman, said: “The Board is delighted to have an executive of Vic Darvey’s calibre to take on the leadership of our business for its next important phase of development. We have a lot to do and Vic has a clear vision of the priorities we need to address.

Importantly, we are very conscious that the Group’s performance has been disappointing over the last 12 months and we sincerely apologise to shareholders for that. With hindsight, our rate of geographic expansion was too rapid and as a result the quality of execution has suffered. We have also made sub-optimal decisions in allocating capital. We will learn from these errors and will not make them again.”

Shares in Purplebricks (LON:PURP) are currently down -4.90% as of 11:14AM (GMT).