Don’t worry about the awful figures about to be reported for 2023 by this £24.5m valued business, because recovery is now well underway for this year.
Within the next few weeks, we should be seeing the announcement of the 2023 results from this professional services group.
Its shares now look ready for a strong recovery in price.
Last Year Was Not Good
We already know that the Christie Group (LON:CTG), last year saw delays in contractual exchanges that impacted ongoing transactions in its agency and advisory business, hitting its 2023 results.
That slowdown also reflected lower activity levels and sentiment in the wider market, as reported by a number of the group’s competitors.
The Business – Dating Back To 1846
Started some 178 years ago, the Christie Group today provides an extensive portfolio of professional services for the hospitality, leisure, healthcare, medical, childcare and education and retail sectors.
With some 37 offices across the UK and Continental Europe, the group has a long-established reputation for offering valued services to client companies in agency, valuation services, investment, consultancy, project management, multi-functional trading systems and online ticketing services, stock audit and inventory management.
The diversity of those services provides a natural balance to the group's core agency business, helping its customers through developing and delivering high quality services that meet their needs throughout the life cycle of acquiring, developing, operating and disposing of their businesses.
It operates through two complementary business divisions:
Professional & Financial Services - trading under the brand names of Christie & Co, Pinders, Christie Finance and Christie Insurance, making up some 68.5% of group turnover in 2022: and
Stock & Inventory Systems & Services – branded Orridge, Venners and Vennersys, which accounted for the balance 31.5% of revenues.
Shareholders
With some 26.5m shares in issue, the former Chairman Philip Gwyn and family hold 35.67% of the group’s equity, while former CEO David Rugg holds 5.01%.
Some seven other holders aggregate another 17% of the shares.
Outlook Showing Positive Start
In its Full Year Trading Update, issued in mid-February, the group noted that it had been seeing positive and encouraging activity levels across its sectors since the start of 2024, with its UK transactional and advisory pipelines having now recovered to a significantly improved position from a year ago.
Analyst View
Rob Sanders at Shore Capital Markets could well be adjusting his current year estimates following the imminent 2023 Final Results being published.
Prior to such guidance forthcoming, his mid-February 2024 estimates suggested quite a recovery in the current year to end December.
His suggested revenue for this year is around £76.0m (est. £66.9m), with adjusted pre-tax profits showing a marked improvement to £4.7m (est. £1.5m loss), generating 13.7p (est. loss 4.2p) in earnings and easily covering a 3.8p (est. 1.0p) dividend per share.
By the end of this year Sanders computes that the company could well be £2.8m cash positive.
My View
This group’s shares have risen 40% since the end of February to 92.5p, from the 69p Low of the last year, while its High in that period was 167p scored in mid-July last year.
Despite the recent upward price move, or in fact because of it, I would now suggest that the shares of the Christie Group are ready to reflect the recovery that is now underway.
It is hoped that the confidence shown by the Board in the mid-February Trading Update has been strengthened even further, which will lead to firmer current year guidance, which in turn could well get the shares back over the 100p level and firmly into the 90p/130p trading range.
A very interesting Recovery Stock.