Legal group Gateley, which employs 120 staff in Leeds, delivers strong performance

Gateley, which employs around 120 staff in its Leeds office, has published its audited preliminary results for the year ended 30 April 2021.

The firm said the results demonstrate resilient double-digit revenue and profit growth, "delivered through an increasingly diverse and successful business model, yielding strong and sustained cash generation, which enabled the reinstatement of dividend payments in the year, with a total dividend of 7.5p".

In a statement, Gateley added: "The board is pleased to report that the high levels of activity, strong trading momentum, overall sense of optimism and confidence, which defined the Group’s performance in H2 FY21, have continued into the new financial year and the board is confident in the outlook for FY22."

Over the year, Gateley recorded revenue of £121.4m, which is a 10.5 per cent increase on the previous year.

Rod Waldie, CEO of Gateley, said: “I am delighted with the excellent FY21 outcome, a year in which we exceeded our own pandemic-adjusted performance expectations set in the first month of the year. We have, once again, delivered year-on-year revenue growth.

"It is testament to the group’s long-established and resilient business model, which is enhanced by an increasing range of connected services offered to clients via our Platforms – market-facing structures on which we aggregate complementary legal and consultancy services. This, alongside our embedded ‘one-team’ culture and the outstanding collective contribution of our people, has been the driving force behind a strong financial performance especially in the context of an extremely disruptive year of uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

“I thank our fantastic people for their exceptionally hard work, commitment and can-do attitude. This includes the leadership team, whose priority has been the safety of our people throughout the Year and the smooth-running of our operational contingency plan, which resulted in the delivery of excellent service to our clients. The leadership team was calm and pragmatic throughout and demonstrated good judgment in planning for the worst whilst managing for better.

“I also thank our clients for their support throughout the year and for giving us the opportunity to work with them on high quality mandates in both legal and consultancy services, which we are increasingly providing in tandem to our clients.

“As we continue our strategy to build a broader professional services business, focusing on both new and existing clients, the demand for these services is strong and we are carrying a robust pipeline of work into FY22. We remain excited by a wide range of opportunities and are looking forward to continuing to grow the group, both organically and via acquisition, in line with our strategy.”

Analysts at finnCap said: "The group is seeing an increasing trend in larger and longer-term mandates in both legal and consulting services."