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.
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