Good morning, welcome to the 2026 financial half-year results for Watkin Jones. I am Alex Pease, the Chief Executive, and I am joined today by Simon Jones, our Chief Financial Officer. The agenda for this morning will begin with a short overview from myself, reflecting on the business and operational performance over the half year and the strategy for the business over the next period. We will update on the core occupational and investment markets we operate in before focusing on our financial and operational highlights, including case studies showcasing the group's progress. The U.K. real estate market remains a highly challenged environment, with global geopolitical events compounding with domestic political instability, confusion, and stasis. The result has been rising inflation, gilts, and potentially interest rates, which are denting investor confidence, pricing, and impacting investment liquidity.
It was positive in the first quarter of our financial year that some momentum was growing across both the wider markets and the U.K. living sectors. With inflation trending down, three interest cuts in 2025 and more forecast for 2026, the market was beginning to respond with more transactional activity and positive sentiment, highlighting the continued institutional investor demand for U.K. living sectors when the market backdrop allows. This gives confidence that despite recent macro events clearly pushing a fuller recovery of liquidity and activity to the right, that the structurally undersupplied residential sectors will recover, driven by scarcity of supply and continued investor demand. In light of the wider market backdrop, we believe our half-year results continue to confirm good operational progress and performance. Our adjusted operating profit of GBP 0.4 million is in line with FY 2025, and we showed an improved gross trading profit margin of 14.2%.
Cash and debt management remain a key focus. We retain a strong gross cash position of GBP 67.1 million and having further reduced our debt, showing a net cash position of GBP 61.3 million. We have continued to retain and renew our pipeline at circa GBP 2 billion of projects and opportunities with over GBP 300 million of secured revenue and a highly visible 65% of the land pipeline contractually secured and circa 50% with planning consent. Our performance in construction and delivery execution has been very strong with 10 schemes on site and three due for completion this year. Projects are materially on program and margins are outperforming expectations. Our success and progress in diversification will be a core theme this year. In light of the continued ongoing market disruptions, we will continue to broaden our growth of these strategies.
We have increased revenues to over 40% through our diversified activities with over GBP 100 million of revenue expected over FY 2026. We believe there are larger addressable markets to target and more capacity for greater volumes to be delivered. Whilst traditional investment liquidity remains extremely difficult and transactional volumes remain suppressed, we have still managed to innovate and transact with two development transactions and two Refresh opportunities secured and have a number of other opportunities which are under offer or in legals. Fresh have also maintained their assets under management and with an interesting potential pipeline ahead, again, we feel this is an area we can put further volume through.
In light of the real estate market challenges of the last four years, we have looked to leverage the specialist expertise across our business value chains, moving early to diversify the business model into both development partnerships and Refresh and demonstrate more agility in our development transaction structures. As difficult markets persist, the group is continuing to operate a proactive and wider diversification strategy, looking to put more volume and consequently growth through the business. Our strategy for growth is not about moving away from our core strengths. It is about applying those strengths more broadly and more intelligently across a wider opportunity set. We continue to have a targeted focus on prime PBSA and Build-to-Rent opportunities where we continue to see attractive long-term fundamentals. However, we are also progressing further diversification into adjacent living-orientated sectors to include co-living, single-family homes, affordable housing, and hotels.
We are also having early conversations on development partnerships in both the retirement and healthcare sectors. We believe wider diversification widens our addressable markets and creates an opportunity to grow both volumes and revenue from the same core capabilities. It is not diversification for its own sake, but to build resilience, help counter market challenges, and give us more routes to deploy capital, capability, and relationships effectively. An advantage we have is that we believe we have the platform and overhead structure already in place to deliver greater volume. We do not need to reinvent the business, but use the existing platform more fully, targeting higher origination, aligning resources to where demand is strongest, and staying agile in how we respond to changing market conditions. The final pillar of our strategic priorities is a continued theme and focus on execution and efficiency across the business.
Maximizing delivery performance, supply chain management, and cost and cash control have never been more important, particularly as we target broader sectors and greater volumes. The strength of our relationships and our understanding of investors is absolutely critical to unlock liquidity in our typical development models, but also in originating new projects across our wider strategies. In summary, we are adopting a practical and proactive strategy, looking to build on the early successful diversification we have executed. We are leveraging and prioritizing the specialist expertise we have across the business, broadening the opportunity set and addressable markets across the living sectors, driving further origination and volume through our existing platform, and finally, maintaining the agility and opportunism of the business and focusing on our delivery and execution. This slide highlights examples where Watkin Jones is already successfully extending our capabilities into adjacent sectors, markets, and delivery structures.
It demonstrates the potential to broaden the addressable market into segments where demand drivers are differentiated and remain supportive, and where the group can apply existing development, planning, and delivery expertise. University partnerships are an interesting area of diversification for Watkin Jones. With university finances continually under pressure and limited funds to improve aging estates, there is an increasing demand for university and private partnerships. We are seeing requirements for both new build and refresh opportunities on the university estates. Whilst procurement processes can be long, the projects are typically of significant scale, and importantly, we believe the requirements play well into Watkin Jones' core skill sets and services, and we can add value to the universities. To this end, we've established a specialized resource to specifically pursue this sector.
We've been selected on our first development partnership project with UPP and the University of Bristol, and I will talk in more detail later on this as a case study. Single-family homes and affordable housing represent one of the fastest growing residential sub-markets. This acceleration is being driven by significant government policy support and funding, coupled with strong investor demand. Our business has relevant existing skill sets in these sectors and is currently on site with two opportunities, with two more under negotiation. This is a sector we will look to explore more and establish the best strategies to potentially expand our exposure. Co-living represents a still nascent but growing subset of Build-to-Rent. Already popular in Europe under a flex living badge, co-living is beginning to attract more investor attention to the U.K.
The product is typically higher density with smaller units and large communal areas, which helps with viability considerations from an investment and development perspective. From a customer viewpoint, the focus is on affordability and community within a high spec and an amenitized building. We currently have three co-living schemes progressing through our planning pipeline. The hotel market has different demand drivers to residential, providing some hedge against our existing residential exposure. The market is attractive to Watkin Jones as it allows us to leverage our existing design, development, and delivery skill sets, and also our supply chain. We are currently on site with two projects and in legals on three further opportunities. We see our exposure to this market continuing to be driven by development partnerships and refresh strategies, and as such, not taking direct market risk.
Turning now to the market overview, I shall provide a synopsis of the key operational and investment market dynamics. Despite the persisting market challenges, we remain confident of the medium-term outlook for our sectors, which are structurally supported, offering needs-based real estate to customers and investors alike. Investment activity across the living sectors remains selective. In Q1, liquidity was still concentrated in operational assets, with PBSA volumes marginally up at GBP 2.1 billion, supported by a few large operational portfolio transactions.
Multifamily volumes remained softer at circa GBP 2 billion, and single-family housing continued to show relative strength at circa GBP 3.3 billion. Early in the year, sentiment and liquidity were showing early signs of improvement, with inflation and interest rates trending down. The recovery has been disrupted by wider geopolitical conflicts and domestic political uncertainty. The living sector remains fundamentally attractive to investors and is considered a core asset class now.
Capital continues to be deployed, but it is currently often more opportunistic as it is still being used and transacted cautiously. PBSA market fundamentals remain supportive, even as performance varies in some segments. Whilst total university applications have increased by circa 3%, the flight to quality continues with higher tariff university markets outperforming. Letting cycles now appear to be more firmly settled in line with pre-COVID trends, with slower early letup accelerating as the academic year start approaches. Some softness in the international student markets has impacted occupancy in the last couple of years, driven by international economic uncertainty, geopolitical events, and domestic policy. This continues to be monitored carefully, but it is believed that the U.K. could be a net beneficiary for international students, with more restrictive policies in competing markets of Canada, USA, and Australia starting to bite on student visa numbers and applications.
On the supply side, new starts are dropping to historic lows, which reinforces a tighter medium-term backdrop and could help fuel a recovery, particularly as older PBSA stock and HMOs continue to exit the sector. To illustrate the continued investor interest and confidence in PBSA, it has recently been reported that La Caisse and Vita are currently progressing a large-scale operational portfolio transaction for circa GBP 675 million. A good endorsement for the sector. The operational fundamentals for Build-to-Rent remain highly attractive, with strong occupancy and rental growth still coming through. Investment continues to be dominated by operational stock with 68% of transactional volumes. The lack of development transactions, reduction in new planning applications, and an 11% decline in starts on site are directly linked to viability challenges in the sector, driven by build costs, regulation, planning delays, and financing constraints.
The recent acquisition of Ebb & Flow in Reading at a reported GBP 200 million again highlights the attractiveness of good-quality trading Build-to-Rent assets. The combination of strong operational performance, severely constrained supply, and continued investor demand should support a significant opportunity in the medium term. We can see that living is now a favored and core allocation for institutions. Most investors are planning to increase their exposure, and a meaningful number are already allocating substantial capital to the Living sectors. Build-to-Rent and PBSA remain priorities for allocations, but there is a clear growth in interest in affordable housing and co-living strategies. This aligning well with the Watkin Jones target markets. At the same time, caution around wider economic and political stability is impacting execution, pricing, and financing of deals and driving viability issues.
The consequence in the near term will be a shortage of future high-quality assets and opportunities coming through the pipeline, which subsequently could likely drive enhanced demand and opportunity into that medium term. The Living sectors represent structurally undersupplied and clear needs-based real estate sectors, which attract investor attention and demand. We believe the Living sectors continue to represent some of the most supported and attractive investment strategies in the U.K. I will now hand over to Simon to provide an update on our financial results.
Thanks very much, Alex. Good morning, everyone. I would now like to take you through the financial highlights for HY 2026 and then talk about some further detail on our outlook and pipeline. Our revenue fell versus HY 2025, in part due to the JV transaction, which we announced in Q1 in Bristol, where we could not recognize the circa GBP 15 million land revenue associated with the sale. It was also due to the low level of transactional activity in recent years. Whilst our revenue fell and core trading gross profit remained broadly flat, our strong operational cost control and continued focus on delivery efficiency contributed to a strengthening margins to 14.2%.
As with previous JV transactions we've closed in Glasgow and Stratford, our core trading gross profit includes the margin from the sale of these joint venture interests, which in H1 is the sale of our Bristol scheme I mentioned earlier, and that was sold to a joint venture owned 95% by Maslow Capital and 5% by the group. As such, we cannot show the divestment within operating profit in the financial statements. Overall, this resulted in a small positive operating profit of GBP 400,000 for the first six months, which is broadly in line with our prior year, which we believe is a positive result as we continue to navigate the economic uncertainty and challenging market conditions.
We remain focused on cash management and control with gross cash at just over GBP 67 million, which after the reduced debt outstanding of circa GBP 6 million, results in net cash of just over GBP 61 million. As a result, cash and available facilities headroom amounted to GBP 111 million. This excludes the GBP 10 million accordion option within our HSBC debt facility. Our trading cash flow is up on last half year at broadly breakeven, which is largely driven by the Bristol JV transaction I mentioned earlier. Moving on to the balance sheet, net assets remain strong at circa GBP 125 million, or about GBP 0.45 per share. That excludes goodwill and is in line with the prior year.
Inventory and WIP is down on FY 2025 due to the transactions closed in the period, albeit is ahead of the prior year as we continue to invest in enabling works and planning for our pipeline. Other current assets are down primarily due to the delayed GBP 10 million cash receipt in our Glasgow transaction, which we closed at the end of FY 2025. We have achieved good operational progress on the Building Safety Act remedial works with four schemes currently on site, two of which are expected to complete this financial year, leading to a reduction in the net provision versus the last year end to GBP 38 million. Now moving to the pipeline and outlook for the business. Our pipeline remains strong at circa GBP 2 billion of live opportunities, testament to the hard work this year to replenish it as we complete projects.
This focus has been especially successful in development partnerships where we've increased our pipeline by over 20% since year end to just under half a billion pounds, giving us a great base from which to augment our existing forward fund business. Approximately 65% of our pipeline is secured, importantly, almost 50% of the pipeline has a planning consent, these schemes are ready to be divested to deliver revenue and profit now. Of our GBP 2 billion pipeline, almost GBP 300 million of this is forward sold and revenue which we will recognize over the next three years, of which around GBP 90 million will arise in the second half of this financial year. As mentioned earlier, market conditions remain challenging, we continue to focus on those factors within our control: cost, delivery management, and cash flow.
As I mentioned, we have circa GBP 300 million of secured revenue as of HY 2026. Our focus in H2 will remain on the delivery of our secured pipeline, which we expect will be in line with our stated margins. With the growth in our development partnerships pipeline, we are pleased to have closed one scheme earlier this year and are currently under offer on a number of further schemes. This has helped us achieve our target set out in our FY 2024 results to achieve around 40% of our revenue from diversified activities. Importantly, despite consistent inflationary pressures, we've maintained our overheads broadly flat and retained the capacity and expertise within the business to drive further volume as we accelerate our move into and broaden our addressable markets of development partnerships and Refresh.
As with last year, FY 2026 outturn is dependent on market conditions which remain challenging and therefore transactions are taking longer to close. We currently have five schemes in the market which are all attracting interest from a range of capital on differing capital structures. FY 2026 outturn will be dependent on the structure and execution of these divestments. In summary, we are pleased with our HY 2026 results in difficult market conditions. Our focus on cost and cash has yielded results with our core trading gross profit % up, and we're excited by the strength of our pipeline as we engage with the funding market. I'll now hand back to Alex to provide an operational update on our business.
Thank you, Simon. Moving on to the land market. It continues the trend of the last few years with declining values across all segments, including a 5.8% drop in urban land. The challenge in the current market remains finding willing sellers at these levels, which is resulting in significantly reduced transaction volumes. Planning and other regulations continues to add costs and delays, though planned government policies and actions should start to alleviate this. The key challenge in land remains one of viability, with the impacts of government tax and regulations, build cost inflation, and other financial anchors all contributing. We believe more land opportunity will continue to emerge, we maintain our disciplined but agile approach to land with a focus on prime markets and flexible defensive land contracts.
As Simon alluded to, this strategy is bearing some fruit with the maintenance of a circa GBP 2 billion potential pipeline and a range of land and partnership transactions under offer. Our recent transaction in Wimbledon is a good manifestation of our land and diversification strategies. It represents an acquisition to develop a co-living scheme in a prime London location in a growing investor relevant sector. The acquisition offers a defensive, conditional planning and funding land contract. The scheme will offer a high density and ESG driven end product geared to customer demands of today. Our delivery function remains a critical differentiator for the business and underpins a key competitive advantage for the group through its market specialism, strong cost and supply chain control, and the technical design expertise crucial in value engineering and driving viability into schemes.
The delivery capability is a pivotal conduit to our diversification, and we have demonstrated this year the ability of the teams and the supply chains to support wider living sector opportunities. Importantly, the work we have done restructuring the delivery team provides us with greater capacity to drive further volume through the overhead structure, which is a clear target for us. With regards gateways and Building Safety Regulator, there are signs that the process and timeframes are slowly improving. We retain 100% success rate with our applications utilizing our internal specialist teams, and we are now starting to successfully win new mandates in part off the back of this service and skillset. Inflation is a clear and present threat to the industry as the impacts of the Iran conflict feed through into supply chains. We are seeing some inflationary pressures emerging, though currently they sit within our existing allowances.
We are taking proactive actions where possible, accelerating procurement, forward buying inventory materials, and looking to value engineer and optimize design, as well as working closely with our supply chain to mitigate the impacts. The team are executing well with multiple schemes on site and margins outperforming expectations. Our delivery function serves as both a risk management tool and a source of value creation for the business. Ty Afon in Cardiff is an excellent example of the development partnership strategy combining with delivery capability. Appointed by Legal & General to be the developer and delivery conduit for an already consented large-scale Build-to-Rent site, we were able to add considerable value and drive viability through design and planning rationalization. The project demonstrated a swift mobilization from contracts to start on site and therefore revenue generation.
At 718 units over two substantial towers, it is a good illustration of the scale and complexity of projects we can undertake. The project's first phase reached practical completion last week, and the second phase is a number of months ahead of program after we were able to rationalize the sequencing of the build and twin track progress with alternate subcontractors working on both towers. No mean feat in this market. Having launched Refresh two years ago, primarily targeted at PBSA, we are seeing a growing opportunity to enhance the addressable market, not just in PBSA, but through diversification, particularly into wider residential sectors and hotels. There remains strong interest from investors, either targeting defensive strategies to maximize occupancy and net operating income, or those looking for more opportunistic or value-add returns. With nearly a third of our tracked pipeline being sold for repositioning strategies.
We are encouraged by our performance to date with our margin assumptions being validated in the delivery of the assets. In the half year, we've agreed contracts or letters of intent for projects which could total circa GBP 27 million of revenue, and we have four further projects under offer. Importantly, our tracked pipeline continues to grow. At circa GBP 250 million, this is nearly a 10% increase on the FY 2025 full year. Execution of projects still remains slower than we would like, driven often by the complexity and level of due diligence required. We are actively taking steps within the business to focus and enhance our resource and ability to execute and increase volumes of projects. We believe Watkin Jones' expertise in remediation, compliance, construction, and operation appears to be a clear differentiator and USP in this market.
This case study in Birmingham offers a good illustration of typical deal structures we are seeing and how we lever our capabilities to unlock redevelopment. The client acquired the asset based on a value add and repositioning strategy. The property is known to have a range of remediation actions required and was also in need of a cosmetic refurbishment and repositioning. The project demonstrates the breadth of capability the team can offer, combining remediation, fire safety, and M&E upgrades with refurbishment and amenity improvements. The project will be undertaken with residents still in occupation, maintaining revenue for the client and working to a defined program. It demonstrates an integrated approach to protecting asset performance and creating value. Development partnerships are now a core part of our diversification strategy.
They build directly on our existing development and contractor capabilities, allowing us to deliver revenue and margins faster and on an attractive risk-adjusted basis, while also creating a balanced multi-tenant mix with clear cross-selling opportunities within the group. Importantly, the strategy is resonating well with investors with encouraging interest in both the model itself and our routes to market. Investors are recognizing the gaps in their risk coverage and cost certainty through more traditional contractor-led options, and the combined developments and construction skill sets can reduce risk for the investor but also unlock value and viability. We see a clear opportunity to expand and increase volumes, broadening into adjacent sectors such as affordable housing, retirement, and hotels.
Again, we are reviewing and improving internal processes to support more efficient execution and have recently established a specialist partnership team to deepen our relationships with universities, local authorities, and registered providers. We believe the business has capacity for further volume of these projects, and we are broadening our addressable markets and expertise to help achieve this. Temple Island in Bristol is the group's first university partnership deal. Watkin Jones, alongside UPP, a specialist university accommodation provider, have been selected to deliver 890 beds to the University of Bristol. The deal, currently in legals and due diligence, will leverage our specialist development expertise to solve a range of technical, planning and gateway hurdles before moving into the delivery phase. Simon will now provide an update on Fresh, our operational business.
Thanks, Alex. Turning to Fresh, we built a scaled operating platform with approaching 22,000 units under management across PBSA, co-living, and Build-to-Rent. That breadth is becoming more valuable as the market shifts, particularly with the Renters' Rights Act raising the bar on operational capability. Encouragingly, leasing on stabilized stock is tracking in line with last year, although we are keeping a close eye on the study visa applications, which were behind previous years in Q1 of this year. In PBSA, performance remains strong. We are platinum certified on the Global Student Living Index, with a student resident NPS of +38, reflecting the quality of the operating model and consistency of execution. We also have clear forward growth, with over 1,700 beds mobilizing for this September and a further 802 beds under contract for next year.
In the first half, we added five stabilized sites, bringing 784 beds into the portfolio, while also originating two Refresh projects, underlining the value of our integrated platform. In Build-to-Rent, we're extending our platform in a disciplined way. A bespoke brand is in development to launch later this year. We're mobilizing our Belfast scheme, being the third asset in this segment. In co-living, our second scheme has mobilized successfully, and we're also seeing a growing co-living pipeline supporting the next phase of this expansion. We have a strong core business, proven operating capability, and a credible growth plan across adjacent living sectors, allowing us to diversify our revenue streams. This positions us well to scale further while maintaining quality and control to drive value from our established platform. I'll now hand back to Alex for a summary.
In summary, H1 has been characterized by a resilient operational performance and execution against a highly challenged market backdrop. We have delivered a strong performance in our project deliveries, maintained our discipline in cash and cost controls, and we have made continued progress in the group's diversification. While investment markets remain very difficult, we are actively marketing assets and generating investor interest and are proactively looking to engage, innovate, and partner with investors on potential structures. Looking forward, we are further leveraging our platform and specialist skill sets, prioritizing our resource to focus and align to market conditions. We have adopted a proactive strategy using diversification to broaden our addressable market across the living sectors and create new opportunities for volume growth. Importantly, we have an established market-leading platform with an overhead structure and existing capability which support the capacity for future growth and volume.
Crucially, we operate in some of the most attractive real estate markets in the U.K., which are demonstrating operational performance, are structurally undersupplied, and offering critical needs-based real estate to our customers. The sectors retain strong investor interest and allocations and should offer significant opportunity into the medium and long term. That concludes our half-year analyst presentation. Thank you for your time.