18 September 2024
Christie Group
plc
("Christie Group" or the "Company")
Trading
Update
The Board of Christie Group plc
(CTG.L) continues to expect to report a profitable full year
performance. However, continuing volatility means that the Board
now anticipates the full year profit to be lower than previously
expected.
Performance for the six months ended 30th June 2024
("H1")
The Group expects to report a H1
operating loss of £0.6m (2023 H1: £1.4m loss) when issuing its
Interim Results. This first half operating loss is principally a
result of weak invoicing in its International brokerage operations
as previously announced and insufficient growth in its visitor
attraction software business. H1 operating losses from its retail
stocktaking operation are less than H1 2023.
Current trading &
outlook
We have invested to build and retain
a team which is required to support and sustain future growth and
while this has helped boost transactional pipelines across our
brokerage business the completion of those transactions is slower
than we anticipated. The volume of business we are working on and
continued enquiry levels give us confidence in the future success
of the brokerage business.
While some volatility has continued
into H2 - the Company has just received confirmation that a
significant disposal mandate within our agency and advisory
business, which had been expected to successfully conclude during
Q3, has been aborted at an advanced stage and the vendor has no
current plans to pursue a sale with an alternative buyer -
transactional pipelines in both our UK and International agency
businesses are, nonetheless, encouraging.
We ended H1 with a UK transactional pipeline 24% higher than a year
ago, and 16% higher than at the start of 2024. New instruction
activity from clients across all our specialist sectors seeking to
buy and sell businesses remains robust. UK transactional activity
has recovered well following the disappointing volumes achieved
during 2023, and we anticipate returning to brokering the sale or
purchase of over 1,000 businesses in 2024 (2023: 820) with average
fees likely to be higher in the second half than H1 due to the
sector mix of business.
In our international operations, we
have grown transactional pipelines significantly, but experienced
weaker than anticipated H1 invoicing. This, together with the
continued investment to strengthen our teams on the continent, has
served to offset an otherwise robust performances from our UK
agency, advisory and finance brokerage operations. H2 invoicing in
those international operations is expected to be far more positive
than H1 from a range of ongoing mandates.
Summary
As a result of the above, overall
group revenues for the full year are expected to be relatively
robust and at a level which is at least 95% of previous
expectations. However, the mitigating effect of our incentivised
pay schemes will not fully offset this revenue shortfall, resulting
in a reduction of our full year operating profit expectations. As
such, the Board now anticipates reporting a full year operating
profit between £0.5m and £1.0m, with this profit range reflecting
the ongoing uncertainty on transaction timings.
The Group expects to issue its
Interim Results on Monday 30th September 2024.
Enquiries:
Christie Group plc
Dan
Prickett
07885 813101
Chief
Executive
Simon Hawkins
07767 354366
Chief Financial Officer
Shore Capital
Patrick
Castle
020 7408 4090
Nominated Advisor and
Broker
Notes to Editors:
Christie Group plc, quoted on AIM,
is a leading professional business services group with 37 offices
across the UK and Europe, catering to its specialist markets in the
hospitality, leisure, healthcare, medical, childcare &
education and retail sectors.
Christie Group operates in two
complementary business divisions: Professional & Financial
Services (PFS) and Stock & Inventory Systems & Services
(SISS). These divisions trade under the brand names: PFS - Christie
& Co, Pinders, Christie Finance and Christie Insurance: SISS -
Orridge, Venners and Vennersys.
Tracing its origins back to 1846,
the Group has a long-established reputation for offering valued
services to client companies in agency, valuation services,
investment, consultancy, project management, multi-functional
trading systems and online ticketing services, stock audit and
inventory management. The diversity of these services provides a
natural balance to the Group's core agency business.
The information contained within this
announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside
information under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No.
596/2014.
For more information, please go
to www.christiegroup.com.
