DTZ has issued a profit warning, citing 'challenging trading conditions' for the UK & Ireland as well as its Continental Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) business.
DTZ has issued a profit warning, citing 'challenging trading conditions' for the UK & Ireland as well as its Continental Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) business.
The London-listed global real estate adviser announced on Thursday that it expects its results for the full year to 30 April 2011 to be below current market expectations and the company expects to report a small loss for the year.
The news is in stark contrast to CB Richard Ellis and Jones Lang LaSalle, the two largest listed global property brokers, who reported strong third-quarter results this week.
DTZ came with the profit warning in an update on its trading position outlined in its Interim Management Statement (IMS) on 17 September 2010, ahead of its close period in the run-up to its half-year results for the six months to end-October 2010.
The company said that while its Asia-Pacific and Canadian businesses have performed strongly, the UK & Ireland and CEMEA businesses are still experiencing challenging conditions as was outlined in September.
'At that time we commented that the UK & Ireland and CEMEA were experiencing lower levels of activity compared to the same period last year and this remains the case,' DTZ said in the update.
'While our pipeline is good, we continue to see protracted transaction lead times and consequently believe some of the recovery in transaction activity which we expected to come through in the second half of our current financial year will now be pushed back into the next financial year.'
'Longer term we are confident that our earlier significant restructuring programme, coupled with our strategy to continue to invest selectively in key revenue generating areas, means the Group is in a good position to grow its top-line revenue and profitability,' DTZ added.