Colliers cuts dividend after £4.9m loss

Mike Phillips 07/04/2009 08:56

Listed agency Colliers CRE has scrapped its dividend in an effort to preserve cash after posting a £4.9m loss in 2008.

In full-year results this morning, Colliers said that as well as the £4.9m operating loss, it had incurred a further one-off loss of £5.1m due to costs related to cutting staff and the write-down in value of acquired businesses.

Profit in 2007 was £7.9m. The company produced revenue of £78m, just more than a third down on 2007.

Colliers said that it had renegotiated a £24m banking facility expiring in 2012, in which covenants had been waived so that the loss made by the company would not trigger any breaches.

Colliers said it had been hit by the fact that transactional activity had not picked up in the fourth quarter as expected.

“As late in the year as the beginning of September, we were still expecting revenues, as has traditionally been the case, to be significantly higher in the second half of the year than the first,” Colliers chairman Sir John Ritblat said.

“The failure of Lehmans that month provoked a further lurch downwards in both sentiment and, as a consequence, transaction levels. Banks stopped lending and investors and occupiers put plans on hold. This market freeze continued into the fourth quarter and only now are we seeing the first tentative signs of a partial thaw.

"I believe we have done well to act quickly and decisively by reducing costs and reorganising our business to respond to these new market conditions. We are now in a position to take full advantage of an upturn in activity when the day arrives, but without having compromised our high service levels to clients."

David Izett, chief executive, said: “We still face profoundly difficult markets. However, we can take a number of positives into the current year."

michael.phillips@rbi.co.uk