Housebuilder will restore dividend after boom year
THE booming housing market has helped Taylor Wimpey to record first-half results and sent profits at rival Morgan Sindall up more than 280 per cent.
Taylor said it made a pre-tax profit of £287.5million for the six months to July 4, compared with a £39.8million loss for the same period last year. Its revenues rocketed 191.1 per cent to £2.2billion.
Taylor’s strong results enabled it to reinstate its half-year dividend at 4.14p per share, which means shareholders will get a payout worth approximately £151million. It cancelled its dividend payouts last year due to the pandemic.
Aside from a strong housing market, Taylor’s profitability was helped by its grip on costs and higher completions.
The builder believes that the continued strength of the housing market means it should beat analysts’ forecasts and make full-year operating profits of around £820million and complete 13,200 to 14,000 homes this year.
Oli Creasey, property analyst at wealth manager Quilter Cheviot, said: “Given the strength of these results, we think these [its targets] are achievable. Build costs are increasing but are being fully offset by the increase in house prices, and so not putting pressure on margins.”
At its half-year results, affordable housing and urban regeneration specialist Morgan Sindall said that its trading is ahead of pre-pandemic levels.
Pre-tax profits were up 285 per cent to £52.4million and revenues rose 14 per cent to £1.56billion. The group hiked its dividend up to 30p from 21p for the same period last year. Boss John Morgan said: “We’ve had a very strong first half in which we’ve upgraded our profit guidance three times.
“We continue to make significant operational and strategic progress across the group.With such positive momentum across all our activities, I am excited by the opportunities ahead.
“Today’s results, combined with the current visibility for the rest of the year, gives us every confidence of another strong performance by the group in the second half.”