Savills plc, the international real estate advisor, today announces its preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2020.

Key financial highlights

• Group revenue down 9% to £1.74bn (2019: £1.91bn*) as resilient revenues from less transactional services significantly mitigated reduction in transaction volumes
• Underlying** profit before tax £96.6m (2019: £143.4m)
• Statutory profit before tax £83.2m (2019: £115.6m)
• Statutory basic earnings per share (‘EPS’) 49.0p (2019: 60.6p)
• Final ordinary dividend of 17.0p reflecting the resilience of the less transactional business performance
• Net cash £177.7m (2019: £28.5m)

* See Note 1(b) for details on the prior year restatement of revenue.
** Underlying profit before tax ('underlying profit') is calculated on a consistently reported basis in accordance with Note 3 to this Preliminary Statement.

Key operating highlights

• Resilient performance reflects geographic diversity (59% non-UK revenue) and strength of less transactional service lines (62% of Group revenue, versus 57% in 2019)
• Less transactional services revenues down 1% as Property and Facilities Management businesses performed well, underlying profit up 4% to £91.1m
• Savills global Transaction Advisory revenues declined by 19% as the pandemic significantly reduced the volume of transactions worldwide
• Increased Commercial Transaction Advisory market share, outperforming in many markets including North America, Asia Pacific and UK
• UK and Asia Pacific profits down only 4% and 1% respectively, supported by Property Management and Consultancy
• Savills UK Residential grew revenues by 10% as the market recovered strongly from mid-year
• Savills Investment Management outperformed expectations (against a record 2019 comparative boosted by strong performance fees) with revenue down 11% and increased Assets Under Management (‘AUM’) to £19.0bn (2019: £17.7bn)
• Continued investment in people, technology leadership and innovation in sustainability

Commenting on the results, Mark Ridley, Group Chief Executive, said:

“Savills delivered a robust performance in 2020 reflecting the strength and resilience of our global, diversified business. We continued to grow our less transactional service lines and increase our market share, outperforming in many of our transactional markets despite the challenging conditions. Much of this outperformance is due to our strategy of retaining the strength of our teams and focussing resolutely on addressing both the pandemic-related, and longer term, needs of our clients.

“We remain confident in the long term attraction of real estate as an asset class and although macro-economic uncertainty resulting from COVID-19 clearly remains, we see enhanced investor demand for income and improvements in leasing activity as occupiers increasingly seek to address their requirements. Savills has a strong balance sheet and we remain focused on growing our less transactional businesses, increasing our share of the global transactional markets and enhancing the resilience of the business overall. We have made a good start to 2021 and see opportunities for business development emerging during the course of the year.”

Read the full results