British housebuilder Redrow posted record half-year revenue of just over a billion pounds
British housebuilder Redrow has posted record half-year revenues of just over a billion, boosting profits by 16.6% to £203 million.
The company has increased its interim dividend by 4p to 10p as its boss talks up future prospects on the back of the healthy house market.
Matthew Pratt, Redrow’s chief, said: “We have capitalised on strong demand, improved sales margins and continued to invest for growth.”
It’s order book hit £1.5 billion as it registered a record revenue of £1 billion for the half year.
The business is benefiting from soaring house price inflation – up 9.7% in the last year according to the latest Halifax house price index published earlier this week.
Price inflation continues to outpace build cost inflation which left Redrow making a healthy 19.5% margin on each of the 2,749 houses it built in the 27 weeks to 2 January.
Looking ahead it said margins are now expected to be 19.5% to 20% in the coming year.
The average private selling price of Redrow homes rose by 8% to £419,000 in the period. It said the increase reflects geographical mix; house price inflation and a large increase in customers personalising their homes with extras.
“Our homes particularly appeal to second movers and rightsizers - who would usually look to the second hand market - and are well insulated from affordability issues,” the company said.
Its momentum continued in the last month with private reservations averaging around £417,000 per week.
Aynsley Lammin, analyst at Investec, said the figures exceeded expectations.
Lammin wrote: “A good set of interim results with progress on margins being better than we expected. The Group has essentially reached its normalised margins a year early.”
Shares gained 9.2p, or 1.5%, to reach 634.6p.
