15th Mar 2019 08:48
LONDON (Alliance News) - Berkeley Group Holdings PLC on Friday reiterated its guidance for its current financial year ended April 30 and the two years after that due to a stable trading environment.
"The trading environment for Berkeley remains consistent with that experienced over the last two years. This stability allows Berkeley to reiterate the updated pre-tax profit guidance it provided with its interim results in December 2018 for this, and the next two years, which represented an increase of around 8% in the guidance for the current year," the company said.
The FTSE 100-listed housebuilder's guidance at the end of its previous financial year was for a pretax profit for the two years to April 30 of at least GBP1.58 billion, with guidance for the five years ending 30 April 2021 of at least GBP3.38 billion.
Then, in its interim results, the company upgraded its pretax profit forecast for the current year "by more than 5%" with the split between its first and second half likely to be similar to its previous results, which were weighted 55% toward the first half. Its guidance for the next two years, however, was unchanged.
Given that Berkeley posted a pretax profit of GBP401.2 million in its first half, this would put a pretax profit estimate for its year to April at around GBP730 million.
Berkeley also assumes its net cash on April 30 will be around the level reported at the half year mark of GBP859.7 million.
The company had committed to returning GBP139.7 million by the end of March 2019, and completed this early via its 7.12 pence per share dividend paid January 16.
Berkeley has committed to returning another GBP139.7 million to shareholders by the end of September 2019, this far having returned GBP5.2 million via buybacks.
Shares in Berkeley were up 1.7% at 3,975.00p on Friday morning.
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Berkeley Group