Christie Group warns on profits amid 'continuing volatility'

Professional business services firm Christie Group warned on Wednesday that "continuing volatility" meant that its full-year operating performance would now be weaker than originally expected.

Christie Group now expects to report an interim operating loss of £600,000, up from £1.4m at the same time a year earlier, principally a result of "weak invoicing" in its international brokerage operations and "insufficient growth" in its visitor attraction software unit.

The AIM-listed group also said full-year revenues were expected to be "relatively robust" and at least 95% of previous expectations, but cautioned that full-year operating profits were now seen between £500,000 and £1.0m as it cautioned that the mitigating effect of its incentivised pay schemes would not fully offset revenue shortfalls.

"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," said Christie.

"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."

As of 1345 BST, Christie Group shares had sunk 10.93% to 97.98p.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com