“During what ended up being a turbulent year in which rising interest rates led to a rerating of the UK property market, Henry Boot delivered our best ever underlying profit and grew our NAV, which has allowed us to carry on increasing the dividend by 10%. The main driver of this performance has been strong sales activity across our three key markets of Industrial & Logistics, Urban Development and, most notably, Residential where we successfully sold a record number of plots of land. Management actions, through nearly £30m of well timed and accretive investment property sales, have led to a material outperformance of the investment portfolio against the CBRE index. Total property sales of £279m, combined with selective acquisitions, means gearing remains firmly at the bottom of our target range. Whilst we remain cautious about the near term trading climate, expecting 2023 to be a tougher year, our rock solid balance sheet offers resilience to both weather any further economic uncertainty and to take advantage of any opportunities that arise from it. With early encouraging indicators already evident across certain markets we have the capacity to buy land, maintain and potentially expand our committed development programme as well as to continue to grow our JV housebuilder as soon as we feel economic recovery is on the way. We therefore have confidence in our ability to achieve our medium-term growth and return targets.”

Tim Roberts, Chief Executive Officer, Henry Boot

Financial Highlights

 

  • Record underlying profit1 of £56.1m (2021: £29.3m) driven by residential land and property development sales
  • Revenue of £341.4m (2021: £230.6m), up 48.0%, driven by delivery of committed development programme
  • Profit before tax increased to £45.6m (2021: £35.1m) up 29.7%, after deducting £10.5m for revaluation movements on completed investment property as UK commercial property values fell
  • Increased ROCE2 of 12.0% (2021: 9.6%), up 240 bps, within our medium-term strategic target of 10–15%
  • EPS grew to 25.0p (2021: 21.2p), up 17.9%
  • NAV3 per share grew to 295p (December 2021: 267p), an increase of 10.5%, due to strong operational performance. Excluding the defined benefit pension scheme surplus, an underlying increase of 5.3% to 290p (December 2021: 276p)
  • Robust balance sheet, with Net Debt4 of £48.6m (2021: £40.5m) following strategic investments made during the year, gearing remains prudent at 12.3% (2021: 11.4%)
  • Proposed final dividend of 4.00p (2021: 3.63p), an increase of 10.2%, reflecting the Group’s strong operational performance and in line with our progressive dividend policy, bringing the total dividend for the year to 6.66p (2021: 6.05p)
  • Performance reflects effective management of capital and risk in our three key markets: Industrial & Logistics, Residential and Urban Development

 

Operational Highlights

 

  • £279m of sales led by our land promotion, property development and housebuilding businesses making the most of strong markets in the first half of the year
  • Selective approach to acquisitions throughout the year, totalling £28.4m, including £27m of strategic investment to grow Hallam Land Management and Stonebridge Homes’ land holdings
  • Continued investment in our £240m high-quality committed development programme where costs are 97% fixed
  • Land Promotion
  • A record of 3,869 plots sold (2021: 3,008), driven by a major disposal at Didcot of 2,170 plots
    • 9,431 plots with planning permission (2021: 12,865), leaving HLM well positioned against a backdrop of an increasingly constrained planning system
  • Property Investment & Development
    • Significant committed development programme of £240m, with 63% pre-sold or pre-let
    • Over 1m sq ft of Industrial & Logistics development underway (HBD Share: £150m GDV)
    • £1.5bn development pipeline (Henry Boot share £1.25bn), 64% of which is focused on supply-constrained Industrial & Logistics markets, where occupier demand remains robust
    • Well timed sales within the investment portfolio of £29.6m, at an average 17% premium to the last reported book value, contributed to total return outperformance of -1.5% versus CBRE Index of -9.1%
    • Stonebridge Homes completed 175 homes (124 private/51 social) (2021: 120), at an average selling price for private homes of £503k (2021: £509k). Total owned and controlled land bank is now 1,094 plots (2021: 1,157) with detailed or outline planning permission on 872 plots (2021: 912)
  • Construction
  • The construction business performed ahead of budget with turnover of £100.5m (52% from public sector) out of £128.6m segment total and has secured 68% of 2023 order book
  • Banner Plant has seen record levels of trading activity after experiencing strong demand from its customers and Road Link (A69) has performed well as a result of increasing traffic volumes
  • Responsible Business
  • Continuing to make good progress against our Responsible Business Strategy targets and objectives, launched in January 2022

 

Click here to view the full 2022 Preliminary Results Announcement        

 

NOTES:

1 Underlying profit is an alternative performance measure (APM) and is defined as profit before tax excluding revaluation movements on completed investment properties. Revaluation movement on completed investment properties includes losses of £7.3m (2021: £4.6m gain) on wholly owned completed investment property and losses of £3.2m (2021: £1.2m gains) on completed investment property held in joint ventures. This APM has been introduced as it provides the users with a measure that excludes specific external factors beyond management's controls and reflects the Group’s underlying results. This measure is used in the business in appraising senior management performance.

2 Return on Capital Employed is an APM and is defined as operating profit/capital employed where capital employed is the average of total assets less current liabilities and pension asset/obligation at the opening and closing balance sheet dates.

3 Net Asset Value (NAV) per share is an APM and is defined using the statutory measures net assets/ordinary share capital.

4 Net (debt)/cash is an APM and is reconciled to statutory measures in note 7.

5 Total Accounting Return is an APM and is defined as the growth in NAV per share plus dividends paid, expressed as a percentage of NAV per share at the beginning of the period.

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