Belvoir rings the changes

The management changes come as Belvoir is expanding its business to include estate-agency services. Following the acquisition of a chain of estate agents in Hampshire in September, eight or so of Belvoir’s franchisees have been offering estate agency under a pilot programme. Initial results have been “pleasing”, says founder and chairman Mike Goddard, but “it’s early days yet” and no financial figures have been released.

A raft of acquisitions in 2013 helped group revenues climb by almost a half, but a doubling of operating expenses – which included some one-off transactional costs, fit-out costs and extra expenses related to the pilot scheme – caused operating profit, before exceptional items, to fall to £1.5m from £1.9m. Dilution from a £5.4m placing in November also depressed EPS.

Broker Cantor Fitzgerald has not published EPS forecasts for 2014 but expects pre-tax profits of £3m, up from £1.6m last year. Belvoir failed to meet Cantor’s projections in 2013 and analyst Sue Munden notes the 2014 forecasts will “depend significantly” on how new and old acquisitions perform.