Gateley is expecting a busier second half of the year after estimating that “pre-Budget transactional inertia” hit first-half revenues by \u00a33m.<\/p>\n
The professional services group has told the stock market it would otherwise have been on track to meet full-year expectations but is confident these delays will “unwind” by the end of April.<\/p>\n
“It is difficult to overstate the impact, on most of our transactional services teams, of the pre-Budget uncertainty,” the company said.<\/p>\n
Gateley chief executive Rod Waldie said he was “very pleased” with the results, although underlying pre-tax profits were down 11% to \u00a39.5m after revenues increased by 9% to \u00a394.3m.<\/p>\n
He said: “Each of our platforms grew revenue despite inertia in transactional activity, induced by pre-Budget uncertainty as we progressed through Q2, as compared with very strong transactional activity throughout Q2 FY 25.<\/p>\n
“This primarily resulted from, firstly, focusing on higher value work alongside the implementation of our previously announced enhanced pricing and conversion-to-fees policies and procedures and, secondly, solid returns from recent investments in some of our established, market-leading services.”<\/p>\n
Gateley has a near-term target for its underlying operating profit margin of 13.5%. But in the six months to October it reduced by 1.3 percentage points to 9.2%, reflecting its “patient investments” in people and platforms.<\/p>\n
The Birmingham-headquartered group now contains 16 businesses, centred around its legal services, but also including a property consultancies, tax advisers and business psychologists.<\/p>\n
Its latest addition, the \u00a35.7m acquisition of Hertfordshire-based trade mark specialists Groom Wilkes & Wright in September, is “performing ahead of initial expectations”.<\/p>\n
The group has reduced its fee-earner headcount by 2%, to 1,062, through what it described as “deliberate management of churn”. But it highlighted the recruitment of nine partners and the creation of an eight-strong legal services corporate team in Dubai.<\/p>\n
Gateley maintained its interim dividend at 3.3p per share and said it expects full-year results to be in line with market consensus expectations of \u00a3189.4m revenue and \u00a323.8m underlying profit before tax.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
‘It is difficult to overstate the impact of the pre-Budget uncertainty’, the group told investors<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":2067398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120781,58124],"coauthors":[81],"class_list":["post-2106277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-markets","category-professionals","tag-featured-story"],"yoast_head":"\n