Vistry has posted strong results for its first half, but rising costs saw margins and pretax profit fall.
The housebuilder completed 7,143 homes over the six months, up 32% from the 5,409 homes built over the same period in 2022. This led to a similar rise in revenue, up 31.4% to £1.77bn.
This was largely due to the integration of Countryside, which Vistry bought in 2022.
Operating profit was brought down by rising costs, up by 4.3% to £206.7m, while margin fell from 14.7% to 11.6%.
Pretax profit was down 8.4% to £174m, while basic earnings per share dropped by 43% to 38.3p.
Chief executive Greg Fitzgerald said: “The group delivered a robust half-year performance despite the challenging macro-economic conditions, with partnerships continuing to see good demand, demonstrating its market resilience.”
Fitzgerald said Vistry would continue its strategy to put more emphasis on partnerships and social housing.
“In this context and following our annual review of the group’s strategy, the board has concluded that focusing the group’s operations fully on partnerships by merging our housebuilding operations with our partnerships business, best enables sustained growth in housing output, provides greater benefits to our partners, while maximising value and long-term returns for shareholders, with the group targeting a 40% ROCE and the distribution of £1bn to shareholder over the next three years.”
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