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.

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.