Savills posts upbeat interims
Manchester’s pre-eminence among regional property markets helped Savills to a strong first-half of the year, said the advisory firm as it reported H1 group turnover of £547m and pre-tax profit of £26.4m.
Peter Mallinder, investment director at Savills Manchester, comments: “With Manchester leading the way for the improving regional property markets, the first half of the year saw a strong performance across all our commercial and residential departments.
“In two of the region’s biggest investment deals of the period, Savills advised the Peel Group on welcoming Legal & General Capital as a 50% shareholder at MediaCityUK and Orchard Street on its £61.8 million acquisition of Snipe Retail Park in Ashton-under-Lyne.
“The industrial agency team acted on deals totalling more than 1.75m sq ft, which included securing 400,000 sq ft for Nice-Pak in Wigan and 343,000 sq ft for B&M in Runcorn.
“In the office market, our instruction as letting agent at One St Peter’s Square and advising PwC on the largest city centre acquisition of the year to date at 1 Spinningfields were among our key successes.”
Savills said it employs 200 people in its Manchester office at Belvedere.
Savills’ unaudited results for the six months ended 30 June 2015 showed revenue up 27% to £547.0m (H1 2014: £430.8m). Group underlying profit before tax was up 28% to £38.4m (H1 2014: £30.1m). Profit before tax was up 7% to £26.4m (H1 2014: £24.7m). Underlying basic earnings per share up 16% to 20.0p (H1 2014: 17.2p) and asic earnings per share down 17% to 11.7p* (H1 2014: 14.1p). The interim dividend increased 7% to 4.0p per share (H1 2014: 3.75p).
Shares in Savills rose 2p to 986p by 11am.
