Savills plc, the international real estate advisor, publishes the following Interim Management Statement (IMS) for the period from July to date.
Savills plc, the international real estate advisor, publishes the following Interim Management Statement (IMS) for the period from July to date.
Summary and Overview
Since June our UK and Asia Pacific businesses have continued to outperform and our European and US businesses, whilst continuing to face challenging market conditions, have performed in line with our expectations.
As we enter the crucial final weeks of the year, it is clear that transactions in the Prime London Residential business have continued at a healthy level, albeit that as anticipated, the fourth quarter will see lower volumes than the exceptional fourth quarter of 2009. Our UK Commercial Transaction Advisory business has also continued to perform strongly with third quarter revenue over 60% ahead of the same period last year. We anticipate that it will continue to perform well through the last quarter of 2010 although with limited growth against the strong comparative quarter last year.
In Hong Kong we have yet to see any downturn in Transaction Advisory revenues in what will, in all probability, turn out to be a record year for Savills in that market. Contrary to our expectations, the third quarter continued to show strong period-on-period revenue growth at over 65%. However, as a result of the high level of transaction activity during 2010, which is up over 100% year-on-year, and the consequent shortage of available stock, we believe that the previously anticipated reduction in investment transaction activity is now more likely to take effect during 2011.
As a consequence of the continued strength of our trading performance, particularly in Asia, and the potential completion of some significant London transactions prior to the year end, we anticipate that the Group's underlying profit before tax for the year to 31 December 2010 will be in excess of £40m.