Savills PLC
08 January 2008
SAVILLS PLC
('Savills' or 'the Company')
Trading Update
Savills, the international property services company, is pleased to announce a
trading update for the year ended 31 December 2007 prior to entering the close
period before the announcement of the full year results, which are scheduled for
release on 12 March 2008.
Overview
2007 has been a record year for Savills with the business benefiting from its
diversified activities and international presence. Trading conditions in many
commercial investment markets, particularly in the UK and US, have clearly been
challenging in the last few months. Our Residential business, however, remained
resilient. Other areas of our business, most notably consultancy, property and
facilities management, financial services and fund management, together with our
transactional businesses in Europe and Asia, have performed well.
Overall, we expect our 2007 full year results to be slightly ahead of
expectations.
Main Business Streams
Transactional
Tenant demand for commercial property in the UK and across Europe has remained
steady for most of 2007. In the UK and European investment markets, following a
strong first half to 2007, trading volumes in the second half have been
restrained by the credit squeeze.
The prime UK residential markets have proved more resilient to the credit
squeeze than lower priced markets. Whilst the stream of negative news coming
from the financial sector affected prices and volumes in the final quarter,
prices at the top end remained relatively firm.
In Asia, the property markets remain active and demand for residential and
commercial property in Hong Kong and Singapore has been strong. Australia has
also benefited from increased demand for property assets as the inflow of
institutional money continues amid a shortage of stock.
In the US, our new Savills Granite business has performed in line with our
expectations and integration is going well.
Consultancy
Our Consultancy businesses across the Group have performed well. Demand for
services such as planning and valuations has been at record levels. Planning is
a long lead time business and the doubling of our planning staff numbers in the
UK has resulted in an increase in new instructions. In Europe we have continued
to build successfully our Valuation business.
In Asia Pacific, demand for IPO and other forms of institutional listings has
resulted in an increased demand for our valuation and consultancy services.
Property and facilities management
Our Commercial Property Management businesses have benefited from organic
growth, acquisitions and key staff recruitment. Our European business was
strengthened by the acquisition of a dedicated property management business in
Germany.
During the year, our Asian Property Management business has sought to focus on
higher margin business and continued to grow as we improved the quality of our
instructions and our service delivery. Our Asian Facilities Management business,
Guardian, had a record year, winning new contracts in Hong Kong and Macao.
Financial Services
We continued to grow our Mortgage Broking business with recent office openings
in Cardiff and Jersey and further openings planned for 2008. The credit squeeze
has had an impact on the main residential mortgage broking division but this has
been partially offset by increased referrals from our residential agency
business and improved performance in property insurance broking and commercial
debt broking.
Fund Management
Cordea Savills performed well in 2007, launching a Pan-European fund plus four
market and sector specialist funds. We have also now entered Asia with the
establishment of an Indian joint venture and the launch of our first Indian
fund.
Outlook
Over the past years we have invested in broadening and deepening the business
and Savills benefits from being a well-diversified group both by business line
and geography. The outlook for our UK and US commercial investment, UK
residential and UK mortgage broking businesses will inevitably depend on how
quickly confidence returns to financial markets. However, our transactional
businesses in Asia and Europe currently appear less affected by the credit
squeeze. We look forward to continued progress in our consultancy, property and
facilities management and fund management businesses.
Contacts
Savills 020 7409 9923
Aubrey Adams, Group Chief Executive
Mark Dearsley, Group Finance Director
Citigate Dewe Rogerson 020 7638 9571
Sarah Gestetner
George Cazenove
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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