Savills PLC (LON:SVS) said it was “difficult accurately to predict” the impact of coronavirus on its results for the coming year as the estate agency reported flat underlying profits for last year.
The FTSE 250 group declared a final ordinary dividend of 12.05p per share and an extra interim dividend of 15p to be paid at the same time, making a total of 32p for the year, up 3% on the prior period.
Revenue of £1.9bn was up 10% over the year, driven by 16% growth in Savills’ “less transactional” business lines that made up 57% of revenue.
Underlying profit before tax was £143.4mln compared to £143.7mln the year before, while statutory profit before tax rose 6% to £115.6mln.
On the outlook, chief executive Mark Ridley said in Asia, particularly China, it was “clear that COVID-19 is having a significant impact on transactional activity and may have a similar effect elsewhere, depending to an extent on the length and severity of each outbreak”.
“The situation is dynamic and due to the uncertainty, it is difficult accurately to predict the full impact of this issue on our business for 2020 as a whole.
“However, given the nature of the real estate market, we would anticipate that any near term slowdown caused by sentiment and specific measures taken to combat COVID-19 would generally result in a temporary delay in activity rather than an absolute loss of business.”
The first two months of 2020 outperformed the same period last year “on all measures”, he added but with the growing spread of the coronavirus spread outside of China, “we do expect a greater weighting of activity to the second half of the year”.
Shares in Savills fell almost 9% to 913p in early trading on Thursday.