Persimmon PLC Trading Update (3520K)
April 16 2015 - 02:00AM
UK Regulatory
TIDMPSN
RNS Number : 3520K
Persimmon PLC
16 April 2015
TRADING UPDATE
THURSDAY 16 APRIL 2015
Persimmon plc ("the Company") will hold its Annual General
Meeting ("AGM") at 12.00 noon today at York Racecourse when the
Chairman will make the following statement regarding current
trading, financial performance and the outlook for the current
financial year. This statement covers the period from 1 January
2015 to date and supplements the update given with the 2014 Final
Results on 24 February 2015.
We have made an encouraging start to the 2015 financial year.
Customer confidence is being supported by the ongoing improvement
in UK economic performance and the mortgage market continues to
offer customers the opportunity to access mortgage credit on very
attractive terms.
Having entered 2015 with a healthy forward order book, our
strong sales performance over the first fifteen weeks of the new
year has resulted in total forward sales revenue, including legal
completions taken so far this year, being 7% higher than last year
at GBP2.00 billion (2014: GBP1.87 billion).
Our weekly private sales rate per site for the period was 6%
ahead of the prior year. We have 7,375 new homes sold forward into
the private sale market for 2015 with an average selling price of
c. GBP207,900, which is 4% higher than last year.
In keeping with the long run trend, over the period we
experienced an increase of c. 20% in the level of visitors to our
home-finder websites when compared with last year, as increasing
numbers of customers chose to find their new home online, whilst
the number of customers visiting our development sites remains in
line with the strong comparative period last year. Cancellation
rates have continued to run at historically low levels.
We continue to work hard to increase further the number of homes
we are building to drive our current year legal completion volumes
ahead of the previous year's total of 13,509 new homes. To help
address the challenges of securing the appropriate level of high
quality tradespeople on each of our sites we launched our Combat to
Construction training scheme in September last year. This scheme
provides the opportunity for leavers from the UK Armed Forces to
master the trade skills that are key to the house building process.
At the end of March we had over 80 trainees registered on the
scheme and we expect to recruit over 300 trainees during 2015. The
planned increase in the number of skilled tradespeople employed
directly by the Group will support improved productivity and the
potential for further growth in legal completion volumes in the
future.
We have now opened 85 of the 120 new sites planned for the first
half of 2015 and we are currently developing 385 active outlets
across the UK. We continue to build new homes on all sites where we
have an implementable detailed planning consent.
The land market has continued to provide good opportunities for
new investment at attractive returns. As anticipated, in line with
past experience it has become increasingly difficult to secure
planning consents for sites as May's General Election approaches.
While we would expect such delays to be short term in nature, they
are hindering the expansion in the number of active outlets
required by the housebuilding industry to support an increase in
the volume of newly built homes delivered to the market.
Nevertheless, as a result of our strong prior investment in new
land we remain confident of having c. 400 active outlets open by
the middle of the year.
Exercising capital discipline through the cycle whilst growing
the business as market conditions allow is at the core of our
strategy launched in early 2012. A key feature of this capital
discipline is management's commitment to return c.GBP1.9 billion of
surplus capital to shareholders over the ten year period to
2021.
The third payment of the Capital Return Plan of GBP291 million,
or 95p per share, was approved by shareholders at a General Meeting
held on 19 March 2015. This return of capital was paid on 2 April
2015 by way of a B / C share proposal.
Having delivered a 44% increase in new homes built and sold
since the launch of the new strategy, a total of GBP733 million of
surplus capital has been returned to shareholders under the Capital
Return Plan, over GBP500m higher than was originally planned at
this stage. We remain confident of making further good progress
over future periods.
We will provide a further report in our Trading Update on
Tuesday 2 July 2015.
For further information please contact:
Jeff Fairburn, Group Chief Simon Rigby
Executive
Mike Killoran, Group Finance Kevin Smith
Director
Persimmon plc Jos Bieneman
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7638 9571 on Citigate Dewe Rogerson
the day
Tel: +44 (0) 1904 642199 thereafter Tel: +44 (0) 20 7638
9571
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END
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