FROM THE ADVFN BOARD:

First, let's look at the the Commercial property division - Christie and Co, Christie First and Pinders.

These three between them had turnover in 2004 of 37.3m Savills had 316m sales. Savills is valued at 650m. So on that basis alone if a company bought the Christie property division they might pay 75m for it on a valuation the same as Savills.

The Software solutions business VCE Timeless had sales of 13m in 2004. VCE Timeless is an EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale) Software company. A similar company might be Ascribe (ASP). In 2004 Ascribe had sales of just 6.5m and a market cap of 37m. You might therefore expect this division to be worth 75m

The Stock Inventory Businesses, Orridge and Venners had sales of 20m in 2004. A similar business might be Chelford which had sales of 12m in 2004. Chelford is valued at 17m On that basis you might expect this part of Christie's inventories business to be worth 25m.

Sum of the parts, based on sales, these three businesses could be worth around 180m if the business was broken up and sold. Christie as a single entity is valued at 31m.

Come on, if you're a value hunter you can see the cheapness here.

They are set to do 80m in sales here, they are valued at less than half sales! Think about it. It isn't going to take much of a margin increase here to get the profits way higher. If they got margins up to 7% they are on a PE a little over 5 while it's quite possible with these type of businesses the margins go above 10%. If they achieve that the PE is 4.

The market is fast asleep here imo - they could quite possibly sell the property business alone for far more than the current market cap.

SL I got via the free issue and bought more as permitted at discount ..... very tasty to date with 5% bonus share issue next year + divi + possibility of t/o

Good spot bigbob, just wished id seen this one. Still only a PE of 10!! Further to go do you think??

Erm Yes, looking at todays SP (I know - too late again).
Anyone heard any rumour or anything that may be driving this???
Alan

Still going strong.

Director buying at 233p today.
Deep joy.

Just thought i'd drop in and be smug again about the SP.

3 very interesting RNS today.
Taken at face value, 3 guys have gone from 0% holding to in excess of 50% holding in an instant.
Either a mistake or something is afoot.

A mistake. I checked. It is not a recent purchase.
Checking back though, the current PE is only 10 and on 08/12/2006 an Rns stated that 2006 profits would be materially ahead of forecasts come final results in April.
The SP then was 237. It is only 245 now.
Could this have gone unnoticed??

now i know the i/d of CTG! ..... To the best of my knowledge, Christie's specialise and are the leading company in the valuation and sale of restaurants and licensed premises ..... Have not checked, but suspect the shares are not much traded and/or are very tightly held thus creating trading liquidity probs ..... I also do not know against whom they should be compared for "value" as they do not fall into the same sort of league as say Savill's who happen to have a p/e of about 15

Over half of all shares are held by Directors, so they are lightly traded. this merely means that both upside and downside are increased as supply / demand is strangled.
Directors were buying at 233p just before the december update.
As for the PE ratio, I think a ratio of 10 is low for any company. Particularly a smaller profitable one, with a good record and forecasting profits "materially" ahead of expectations.
April will tell us all.

you are prob right .... though Savill's is "in a different league" they are still broadly the same sector so if Savill's is fairly priced, albeit following some recent bullish press comment, p/e of just 10 for CGT looks particularly undemanding.

For all that, NMS is only 500 shares (1250 at today's price), so to buy or sell even quite a small lot (5/10000 shares) would probably upset sp quite badly, even if they are available.

By the way, I assume all the changes in shareholdings since 28/2 are directors' purchases ..... am i correct?

Results out.
Not spectacular, but solid and quite promising.
Alan

Good reults today, but perhaps a little toppy on the P/E

Decent enough results, albeit the current financial turmoil may affect corporate M&A activity in the short term at least - and thereby cutting one of their main sources of revenue. Not a holder, and currently nervous about businesses in this type of sector, particularly where there is not a juicy yield to provide support.