5th Sep 2024 09:51
(Alliance News) - Vistry Group PLC said on Thursday that it was "significantly outperforming" the traditional housing market, as both profit and house completions grew in the first half of 2024.
The Kent, England-based housebuilder said pretax profit rose 37% to GBP156.7 million in the six months that ended June 30 from GBP114.2 million a year before. Revenue was GBP1.72 billion, up 9.4% year on year from GBP1.58 billion.
Adjusted pretax profit rose 7.0% to GBP186.2 million from GBP174.0 million, and adjusted revenue rose 11% to GBP1.97 billion from GBP1.78 billion.
The company reported 7,792 completions for its first half, growing 9.1% from 7,143 last year. Vistry reported it was due to complete more than 18,000 units by the end of 2024, a 12% rise from the 16,118 completed in 2023. This prediction was based on the company's forward order book of GBP5.15 billion, which was up 19% from GBP4.47 billion year on year.
Given the strength of its adjusted earnings, Vistry also announced an interim ordinary distribution of GBP55 million and a special distribution of GBP75 million. The combined GBP130 million will be in the form of a share buyback and is expected to begin this month. Vistry said it completed on Wednesday this week the GBP100 million buyback that it had launched back in April.
Chief Executive Greg Fitzgerald said: "The group has delivered a strong half year performance with Vistry's partnerships model significantly outperforming the traditional housebuilding market. We remain confident on delivering our medium-term targets of a 40% return on capital employed and GBP800 million of adjusted operating profit. In addition, since the strategy update 12 months ago, I'm pleased that the group has now announced or returned GBP285 million of the targeted GBP1 billion capital return to shareholders over three years."
Shares in Vistry were up 4.5% to 1,377.00 pence each in London on Thursday morning.
By Emily Parsons, Alliance News reporter
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