Gateley (Holdings) PLC (LON:GTLY) Chief Executive Officer Michael Ward caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss their half-year results, the new office and acquisition of Gateley Hamer, activity levels, the selling of shares and his view for the remainder of the year
Q1: You’ve announced your half-year results to the 31st October this morning, what’s driven the strong performance in the first half?
A1: I think it’s been a good effort across all of the teams really, we went through Brexit and all the noise around that that as a business we feel well placed to deal with whatever the economic drivers are so no one star in all that just hard work and across order offer.
Q2: Now you recently moved into a new Reading office and completed the acquisition of Gateley Hamer, what was the rationale behind these moves?
A2: The Reading office was an opportunity that was presented to us, we looked at the location of Reading its proximity to London and the legal services on offer in that region and we felt there was a good opportunity for us to open a new office there and to really benefit from the close proximity to London. We’re obviously trying to reduce our overheads and costs but still have full access to the London market.
Q3: Has the business mix changed in the last few months and how are you seeing activity levels at the moment?
A3: Activity levels are holding up, we’re not really seeing any particular change in business mix, as I say the first six months was an effort from all of the business lines we have and we expect that to continue in the next six months.
Q4: There has been some recent selling of shares by staff who were formally Gateley LLP partners, what was behind that?
A4: Well at the IPO we set out that we would allow partners who had shares at IPO to sell up to 10% of their holdings in each of years 2, 3, 4 and 5 and that really is what happened in year 2, the first 10% although probably the numbers were nearer to 8% or 7.5%. The alternative was to never let them sell any shares in which case there might be a very big overhang at the end of year 5 so we think it was really the right thing to do. Obviously we were delighted when Liontrust came in with such a strong purchasing intent.
Q5: How do you view the remainder of the financial year for Gateley (Holdings) Plc?
A5: Business as usual really, keep driving the business forward across all of the business lines.
