By Joe Hoppe
London-listed home builder, Redrow, has reported a decline in pretax profit and revenue for the six months ended Dec. 31. Despite this, the company remains optimistic about its performance in the second half.
During the first half, Redrow’s pretax profit was GBP84 million, compared to GBP198 million in the same period last year. Revenue also decreased from GBP1.03 billion to GBP756 million, with total home completions falling to 1,894 from 2,485.
Redrow attributes these declines to economic and political uncertainty, which resulted in a slower sales rate of 0.36 private reservations per outlet per week, down from 0.38 the previous year. However, the company has experienced an encouraging start to the second half, with the sales rate for the first five weeks of 2024 recovering to 0.52. Additionally, Redrow enters the second half with a total order book of around GBP800 million.
Despite the challenging market conditions, Redrow maintains its full-year guidance, expecting revenue to be at the lower end of the GBP1.65 billion-GBP1.7 billion range and underlying pretax profit in the range of GBP180 million-GBP200 million.
The board has announced an interim dividend of 5.0 pence per share, compared to 10.0 pence per share last year.
“In recent weeks, the housing market has shown signs of improvement, with increasing mortgage approvals and reduced mortgage rates due to greater competition among lenders,” said Chief Executive Matthew Pratt.