Savills Regulatory News (SVS)

8 Jan 2008 07:00

Savills PLC08 January 2008 SAVILLS PLC ("Savills" or "the Company") Trading Update Savills, the international property services company, is pleased to announce atrading update for the year ended 31 December 2007 prior to entering the closeperiod before the announcement of the full year results, which are scheduled forrelease on 12 March 2008. Overview 2007 has been a record year for Savills with the business benefiting from itsdiversified activities and international presence. Trading conditions in manycommercial investment markets, particularly in the UK and US, have clearly beenchallenging in the last few months. Our Residential business, however, remainedresilient. Other areas of our business, most notably consultancy, property andfacilities management, financial services and fund management, together with ourtransactional businesses in Europe and Asia, have performed well. Overall, we expect our 2007 full year results to be slightly ahead ofexpectations. Main Business Streams Transactional Tenant demand for commercial property in the UK and across Europe has remainedsteady for most of 2007. In the UK and European investment markets, following astrong first half to 2007, trading volumes in the second half have beenrestrained by the credit squeeze. The prime UK residential markets have proved more resilient to the creditsqueeze than lower priced markets. Whilst the stream of negative news comingfrom 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 andcommercial property in Hong Kong and Singapore has been strong. Australia hasalso benefited from increased demand for property assets as the inflow ofinstitutional money continues amid a shortage of stock. In the US, our new Savills Granite business has performed in line with ourexpectations and integration is going well. Consultancy Our Consultancy businesses across the Group have performed well. Demand forservices such as planning and valuations has been at record levels. Planning isa long lead time business and the doubling of our planning staff numbers in theUK has resulted in an increase in new instructions. In Europe we have continuedto build successfully our Valuation business. In Asia Pacific, demand for IPO and other forms of institutional listings hasresulted in an increased demand for our valuation and consultancy services. Property and facilities management Our Commercial Property Management businesses have benefited from organicgrowth, acquisitions and key staff recruitment. Our European business wasstrengthened by the acquisition of a dedicated property management business inGermany. During the year, our Asian Property Management business has sought to focus onhigher margin business and continued to grow as we improved the quality of ourinstructions 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 openingsin Cardiff and Jersey and further openings planned for 2008. The credit squeezehas had an impact on the main residential mortgage broking division but this hasbeen partially offset by increased referrals from our residential agencybusiness and improved performance in property insurance broking and commercialdebt broking. Fund Management Cordea Savills performed well in 2007, launching a Pan-European fund plus fourmarket and sector specialist funds. We have also now entered Asia with theestablishment of an Indian joint venture and the launch of our first Indianfund. Outlook Over the past years we have invested in broadening and deepening the businessand Savills benefits from being a well-diversified group both by business lineand geography. The outlook for our UK and US commercial investment, UKresidential and UK mortgage broking businesses will inevitably depend on howquickly confidence returns to financial markets. However, our transactionalbusinesses in Asia and Europe currently appear less affected by the creditsqueeze. We look forward to continued progress in our consultancy, property andfacilities management and fund management businesses. Contacts Savills 020 7409 9923Aubrey Adams, Group Chief ExecutiveMark Dearsley, Group Finance Director Citigate Dewe Rogerson 020 7638 9571Sarah GestetnerGeorge Cazenove This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange