Annual Financial Report - The Guinness Partnership

Publication of The Guinness Partnership Ltd.'s Financial Statements for the year ended 31st March 2022

Financial Statements are now available online: https://www.guinnesspartnership.com/about-us/company-publications/

The Group generated an overall surplus of £44.6m for the year ended 31 March 2022, a decrease of £25.3m compared to the prior year. The overall surplus represents a net margin of 11.5% (2021: 19.0%) on turnover of £388.2m. The reported results in the prior year were impacted by a £94.0m surplus reported on the stock swap with Paradigm Housing Group and a £35.4m early redemption penalty associated with the 2025 bond. In the current year our reported results benefit from a surplus of £18.3m following the transfer of homes in the Liverpool City Region to Riverside Housing Group. 

Our underlying operating margin excluding surpluses from disposal of fixed assets has improved slightly compared to the prior year at 20.1% (2021: 19.9%). Our reported operating margin including surpluses from the sales of housing properties reduced to 24.9% (2021: 45.5%) due to the one-off impact of the stock swap with Paradigm on prior year results.

Our core business remains social housing lettings, with 85% of the Group's turnover being generated from this activity (2021: 90%). Our social housing lettings business delivered an operating surplus of £82.3m and an associated operating margin of 24.5% (2021: £82.1m, 24.8%) for the year. We have maintained our operating margin despite a challenging external environment and rising cost inflation particularly in labour and materials costs which form a large part of our expenditure. Performance has been supported by additional rental income from properties acquired from Clarion Housing during the year.

This year the share of our income generated by first tranche sales of shared ownership properties increased to 8% (2021: 4%) which reflects completions through our development programme. The operating margin on these sales averaged 7.0% (2021: 8.8%) which was lower than target as cost increases on a number of schemes were not fully offset by increased sales prices.

We delivered a 98.1% (2021: 91.2%%) EBITDA-MRI margin as a percentage of interest payable. TGPL's EBITDA-MRI interest cover was 110.3% demonstrating that the core business continues to perform strongly and cover the investment needed to keep our homes in good condition and fund development of new homes. At a Group level the margin has been impacted by reported losses in Guinness Care and Guinness Homes Limited. We expect EBITDA-MRI interest cover to be above 100% in the coming years as underlying margins improve.

All information has been extracted from the 2021/22 year-end financial statements.