“We have had one of our best ever first half years with materially rising profits and good progress achieved against our strategic targets. Taking advantage of our three key markets we have made significant sales whilst being selective on purchases. This has allowed us to keep gearing low, despite continued investment in our high-quality committed development programme and our growing housebuilder, and at the same time increase our interim dividend by 10%. We have worked hard to do our best to adjust to supply restrictions, inflation and an increasingly complex planning system. This work, together with our committed team of people and the relatively high level of forward sales for 2023, see us well placed as we enter what seems yet another period of economic uncertainty.

Tim Roberts, CEO of Henry Boot PLC

Financial highlights

 

  • 11.9% increase in revenue to £144.4m (June 2021: £129.0m) driven by land disposals and property development completions
  • Profit before tax grew 68.0% to £38.8m (June 2021: £23.1m) due to strong performance of residential land sales and industrial development activity
  • Increased ROCE¹ of 10.1% (June 2021: 6.3%), up 60.3%, expect to be in top half of our medium-term target of 10%–15% by the year-end
  • EPS increased significantly to 24.1p (June 2021: 14.1p), up 70.9%
  • NAV² per share grew to 297p (December 2021: 267p), an increase of 11%, due to strong operational performance. Excluding the defined benefit pension scheme surplus an underlying increase of 9% to 291p.
  • Robust balance sheet, with Net Debt³ of £42.8m (December 2021: Net Debt £43.5m) after making the decision to limit further site acquisitions. Gearing remains prudent at 11% (December 2021: 12%)
  • Declared an interim dividend of 2.66p (June 2021: 2.42p), an increase of 10%, reflecting the Group’s strong operational performance and in line with our progressive dividend policy

 

Operational highlights

 

  • Land promotion
    o 3,447 plots sold (June 2021: 2,288), higher due to a major disposal at Didcot of 2,170 plots
    o Land bank maintained at 92,981 plots (December 2021: 92,677)
    o 9,615 (December 2021: 12,865) plots with planning permission, all held at cost, following disposals and continued delays in the planning system, with c.30% of the 11,694 plots currently awaiting determination timetabled for a decision in H2
  • Property investment & development
    o Committed developments of £262m, with 73% pre-sold or pre-let and 97% of the development costs fixed
    o Approximately 1m sq ft of industrial & logistics development underway (97% pre-sold or pre-let)
    o £1.5bn development pipeline (HB share: £1.2bn), 68% focused on industrial & logistics
    o Investment portfolio value increased to £134m (including JVs) (December 2021: £126m), delivering a total property return of 4.6% over the period
    o Stonebridge Homes has secured 96% of its annual sales target of 200 units for 2022, with a total owned and controlled land bank at 1,164 plots (December 2021: 1,119), We are on track to scale up this business
  • Construction
    o The construction segment achieved turnover of growth of 21.6% to £66.5m (June 2021: £54.7m)
    o Henry Boot Construction remains focused on delivering its fully secured order book for 2022 with 52% of 2023 order book secured
  • Responsible Business
    o Making good progress on the second phase of our recently launched, Responsible Business Strategy

 

Click here to view the full 2022 Interim Results Announcement        

 

NOTES:

 

1 Return on Capital Employed is an alternative performance measure (APM) and is defined as operating profit/ average of total assets less current liabilities (excluding DB pension surplus) at the opening and closing balance sheet dates

 

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

 

3 Net (debt)/cash is an APM and is reconciled to statutory measures in note 14

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