Earnings Call: H1 2021

Feb 4, 2021

Hello, and welcome to the Barrick's Development Interim Results 2021 Conference Call. My name is Jess, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. I will now hand you over to your host, David Thomas, Group Chief Executive to begin today's call. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our interim results presentation. As usual, I will start with an overview of our performance and then revisit our medium term targets. Stephen will then take you through our operational performance, Jessica will cover our financial performance, And I will then return to review the industry fundamentals, sustainability and finally, current trading and outlook. So turning first to Slide 3. Clearly, our first priority throughout this period has been the health and safety of our employees, subcontractors and customers. Our industry leading and also British Safety Council accredited COVIDSecure policies have ensured that we have achieved both continuity of build and the confidence of our employees and subcontractors. We recognize that there are clearly continuing economic uncertainties. But equally, we recognize that the housing market fundamentals remain attractive. Our results rely on our ability to deliver excellence in build And it is therefore pleasing to report a 9.2% increase in our first half completions to a new record level for the group. And just as importantly, We have not just maintained, but we have further improved our industry leading position in terms of both build quality and customer service. The housing market during the period has clearly very resilient. And our first half delivery is testament to the strength, determination and focus of all of our team. With the benefit of our disciplined operating framework, the size of actions over the past 12 months And our tight control of working capital, we have ended the half with $1,100,000,000 of net cash. I am also delighted to announce the reinstatement of our interim dividend with the interim dividend of 7.5p which will be paid in May. Our dividend policy is very clear at 2.5 times cover. Looking now at slide 4, which details our medium term operational targets and our progress in the half year. Our first target remains as rebuilding completion volumes. We have deliberately maintained our infrastructure and capacity to build up to 20,000 completions. In the first half, the group has worked incredibly hard to make the most of what has clearly been strong consumer demand. We are now very confident to be able to grow wholly owned completions by around 30% in FY 2021 to deliver between 15,250,15,750 Homes. Our second target is delivering margin improvement. Here the recovery in our construction activity is key, Along with a tight control of material and labor costs and the leverage around our relatively fixed Operating costs, which Jessica will cover in a little more detail. Our adjusted gross margin improved by 80 basis points on the first half of FY 2020 to 23.8%. Finally, Our rolling 12 months return on capital employed is improving through both profit recovery and our tight control of working capital. These operational targets are clearly the priority for our team. Thank you. And I will now hand over to Stephen. Good morning, and thank you, David. I'd now like to take you through the operational aspects of the business, starting with sales on Slide 6. We've produced an excellent recovery, delivering a sales rate for the 6 months of 0.77 net private reservations per outlet per week, 11.6% ahead of the 0.69% rate generated in the first half of the previous year. Our total average sales outlets, as you can see, are lower by 8% at 342, reflecting the disruption created by the initial lockdown. Looking forward, We see our new site launch is supporting a stable average sales outlet position through the second half of the year, in line with the first half average. Turning now to completions on Slide 7. For the half year, we achieved a strong lift in completions to 9,077 Homes, including joint ventures. Completion growth of 9.2% on the prior half year reflected three factors: Firstly, the benefit of the elevated level of work in progress carried into the year along with the forward sales position, both created by the initial national lockdown. 2nd has been the strength of the underlying market for our homes, as seen on the previous slide. And thirdly, the way our site employees and subcontractors have delivered a superb rebuild of our construction activity. This has ensured we have delivered homes ready for legal completion with the quality and service standards we demand and our customers expect. On pricing, our wholly owned average sales price improved by 1.3%. Our private average selling price improved by 2.4%, reflecting low single digit underlying price inflation and minor regional mix changes. The 9.2% decline in the affordable average selling price reflected a lower proportion of affordable London homes in the mix. The affordable average selling price is also a good guide for the year as a whole, reflecting the mix of anticipated completions in the second half. Now taking a look at the profile of our homebuyers on Slide 8. The completion profile has moved quite markedly from the first half of last year. There are 2 material changes to highlight. Firstly, reflecting the strength of the second hand market, the use of pad exchange fallen quite materially. And secondly, Help to Buy based completions have grown from 34% to 44% of our completions in the first half. This increase reflects the added impetus for existing homeowners looking to use Help to Buy Ahead of the tapering changes and increased first time buyer demand for Help to Buy, given the greater restrictions on high loan to value lending and the more elevated interest rates on non Help to Buy mortgages. And this is something David will come back to later in his presentation. Now on Slide 9, A look at our progress around construction and to help IHOP in understanding the very different shape of half 1 and half 2 completions In FY 'twenty one, today, there are around 18,000 trades working on our sites, a superb rebuild from the standing start created by the initial lockdown. Through this mobilization, all executed with accredited COVID-nineteen safety protocols in place, We have successfully rebuilt our construction activity to build an average of 298 homes each week in the first half. I'd highlight too that the increasing use of our standard house types has added simplicity and repeatability in the build process, Helping build efficiency. This standardization has also helped us deliver build quality, we continue to rank 1st amongst the housebuilding mergers on the NHBC inspections on reportable items and building responsible both of which have also improved across the calendar year. Now turning to the chart. In a typical or normal first half, We would build more homes than we would complete. This you can see with respect to H1 FY 2020 completions and build activity, where we added 818 home equivalents to work in progress. But as you can see from the chart, In the first half, we actually built 7,758 Homes, but completed 9,077, with 13 19 completions unlocked from work in progress. This reflected the benefit of the elevated work in progress we had at start of the year as well as our drive to ensure we met customer commitments on the timing of their home completion. Looking to the second half The year, we are looking to further improve our weekly construction equivalents to firstly meet our completion guidance and secondly, put in place a solid work in progress position to support completion growth beyond FY 'twenty one. Turning now to Slide 10. Key ingredients in delivering a successful development remain unchanged, attractive house types and a great site layout design. And we continually learn and improve through feedback from both customers, our salespeople and our site construction teams. This focus on improvement is a core part of our strategy to increase efficiency, profitability and customer satisfaction. The lockdown on our period out of the land market was not surprisingly, therefore, seized by our divisional and central planning and design teams to apply a razor like focus to and accelerate change across our existing land bank, refining both our house types and our site designs. This process also allowed our people to reappraise the optimal use of our larger sites, most notably around the use of both the Barrett and David Wilson brands to balance site duration and maximize our capacity to both build and sell across the group. The process has been a comprehensive one, yielding additional sales outlets, improved site layouts and street scenes and widen our range of lower price points, recognizing the market changes ahead with Help to Buy. Every change has either added sales value or reduced build cost, supporting our drive to enhance our operating margin looking forward. Out of this process, too, we will now also operate group wide 2 ongoing enhancements. 1st, a site layout review panel. Here, our divisional and central design teams working together will not only ensure we maximize selling square footage, but also create the most desirable places to live. 2nd, We've also adopted a new sales price matrix guide. We use this sales price matrix to help management optimize sales prices on all standard product. It provides a guide for pricing by ensuring product and brand differentials are correctly reflected relative to a market It is a useful tool to help optimize our sales prices, particularly when used in conjunction with rigorous analysis of the local market. These two enhancements, along with our plot profitability model, ensure our divisional businesses consider every option designing the most efficient plotting and house type mix across our sites. On Slide 11, an example of our house type refinement. The Kingsley house type is a popular 4 bedroom detached home and part of the Barrett core range with the old floor plan shown on the left. We've identified the opportunity to increase the accommodation from 2 to 3 double bedrooms. This has been achieved by increasing the width of the front gable projection By just 2 25 millimeters, I'll put simply, an additional brick. There is no increase in the overall footprint and therefore no impact on layout efficiency. As you can see on the right, this has created an additional third double bedroom without compromising bedroom 1 and created optimal use of internal space. Depending on regional location, this additional bed space has created between £7,101,000 of additional revenue with a minimal increase in build cost, and the revised house is proving very popular across the country. This is just one example, but highlights how internal space planning has been used enhance the space homebuyers desire and value, but at minimal additional cost. I've talked before about other changes, notably roof pitches. Here too, we continue to redesign and refine across our house types. There are a number of areas where we are also continually working with our suppliers to either reduce costs, notably in areas like drainage technology, or further enhanced internal space, for example, through changes in heating technology. This is a continuous process. But over the past year, there has been a relentless push to really interrogate and optimize our house types, our site layouts and place making to ensure we have homes customers will Aspire to Own. Turning now to managing market changes around Help to Buy on Slide 12. I think it's worth stating from the outset that this is something we've been planning for and, critically, factoring into our land buying decisions since August 17, more than a year before the changes were formally announced with the October 2018 budget. As a result, since late December 2017, our land buying assumptions have all incorporated both lower forecast sales rates and increased sales incentive levels to ensure our targets around minimum gross margin and return on capital employed are not compromised. We've also deliberately targeted our landline, notably where regional price gaps are more challenging, to our sites where a far greater proportion of our homes fall below the price limits. As part of our detailed land bank review, we've also introduced additional 3 bedroomed house type options to both the Barrett and David Wilson ranges, bringing a greater range of homes inside the Help to Buy price caps. This leads me on to our land bank in Slide 13. Our land bank in plot terms has, as anticipated, reduced on the same point last year, but remained strong at over 75,500 owned and controlled plots and 5.9 years of supply, Reflecting the site by site land bank optimization and replotting our replanning success discussed earlier, we are particularly pleased to have grown the land bank plots with detailed planning consent. Over 84% of our owned land bank or just over 54,000 plots A detailed consent. Some 2,150 plots ahead of the position a year ago. Given the disruption created by the national lockdown and our suspension of land buying through to early August, new land approvals in the half year were limited to 5,635 plus across 35 sites. We are, however, now seeing a very good range of land buying opportunities coming to the market and have a good pipeline of offers accepted on additional sites looking to the second half and beyond. We expect to approve between 14,016,000 plots to purchase in the full year. The familiar chart looking at land costs and planning commsens is in the appendices. But planning commsens continue to run usefully ahead of Building activity and land prices have remained broadly stable despite the period of uncertainty over the last year. To date, we have not seen any significant distressed land opportunities. The availability of land and limited land price inflation continue to support our shorter land bank to which we remain firmly committed as we seek to maximize return on capital employed. Over the medium term, We intend to return to our targeted operating framework of 3.5 years of owned and 1 year of controlled land through a combination of completion growth and disciplined and selective land spend. Turning to build cost in Slide 14. As you are aware, we continuously monitor and manage our supply chain to support the delivery and quality of our homes. Our centralized procurement team manages more than 90% of our build materials from foundation level to finishing trades across our standard house types. On materials, we have experienced very limited inflationary pressure in the first half, with timber the most notable building material where global pricing has impacted our material costs. We have fixed price agreements in place for almost all of our materials to June 2021, and 37% for the calendar year to December 2021. Labor cost inflation has also been limited, reflecting the changed economic backdrop and, for subcontractors, The desire to secure workload visibility from well organized developers with a record for prompt payment. This puts us in a strong position looking forward, given our growth plans and our growth plans and our reputation on both site safety and prompt payment. We continue to expect build cost inflation of between 1% 2% in FY 'twenty one, in line with our previous guidance. And now to summarize in Slide 15. Above everything is our continued focus on the health and of our employees, subcontractors and customers. We have delivered an excellent performance in the half year in terms of both our sales performance and the recovery In site based construction. We are confident in our ability to build to both our completion guidance And the level of work in progress is a strong platform for further growth in FY 'twenty two. We remain committed to delivering and continuously improving our industry leading quality and customer service. And finally, we seized the opportunity over the last year to thoroughly review and optimize our land bank, further refine our house types. And in doing so, we have improved our product offering to drive sales as the market evolves in 2021. Thank you. And I'll now hand over to Jessica. Thank you, Stephen, and good morning, everyone. As David and Steven have said, we delivered an excellent first half with a rapid rebuild of completions and performance. So let's look at our headline numbers on slide 17. Our revenue was £2,500,000,000 This was up 10.1% on last year, driven by completion volumes and a small increase in total average selling price. Adjusted gross margin benefited from our strong completion recovery at 23.8 percent and we delivered an adjusted gross profit of £593,000,000 As we highlighted at our full year results, the first half profit was reduced by the voluntary repayment of CJRS grant income and costs from legacy properties. We therefore delivered an operating profit of £422,900,000 at a margin of 17%. Profit before tax £430,200,000 7,200,000 higher than last year. We closed the half year with an excellent net cash position of £1,100,000,000 Reflecting strong operating cash generation, the reversal of elevated brought forward working capital and the absence of the FY 2020 dividend payment. ROCE was 17.8%. This is a rolling 12 month metric and has therefore been impacted by COVID-nineteen We reduced second half FY 2020 profitability and the high June 2020 capital employed position. I will now take you through our cost structure on Slide 18. After land and build costs, each home delivers a contribution to all other costs and profit of around 32%. The chart shows our contribution per completion over the past two and a half years. You will see that it has been consistent over this period. Adjusted gross margin has been impacted by the leverage around operating costs. This was shown in the second half of FY 2020 with reduced volume and then positively in the first half, but completion levels delivered incremental fixed cost efficiency. Based on our full year guidance With wholly owned completions in the second half expected to be between 19% 25% lower than the first half, our second half is expected to see some reversal of the cost efficiency we experienced in the half year. The cost structure highlights how important completion growth is in our drive to achieve our minimum 20 3% gross margin hurdle rate. The chart on slide 19 breaks down components of our operating margin movement year on year. As I outlined last year before the 80 basis points of legacy property costs, our underlying operating margin was 19.4% in the first half of for 'twenty. This year we've seen a 90 basis point improvement in adjusted operating margin. Firstly, Our margin initiatives which Stephen highlighted earlier continue to drive underlying improvement, the 60 basis point benefit from our regional business from both new sites and our product range, including the continued refinement of our house types. Site extension costs reduced margin by 80 basis points. As explained in September, site durations have been extended primarily due to the temporary closure and a period of reduced productivity post the 1st national lockdown. Inflation benefited margin by 100 basis points as low single digit house price inflation was offset by limited build cost inflation. Was also an increase of 50 basis points from NICS and other items, including the benefit from our exit from Central London last year. Administrative expenses reduced margin by 40 basis points, reflecting additional costs accrued in respect of performance incentive schemes as well as reduced sundry income. As a result, we delivered a first half adjusted operating margin of 20.3%. Adjusted items reduced operating margin by 3.30 basis points to 17%. Turning to adjusted items on slide 20. As announced in July, the Board has decided to return the £26,000,000 of CJRS grant income received during the 1st national lock This was shown as adjusted income last year and this year the repayment is shown as an adjusted cost. We also incurred £51,000,000 of net costs in relation to legacy properties as previously announced made up of £56,300,000 of operating costs offset by £5,300,000 credit in relation to joint ventures. The operating charge includes £52,100,000 in relation to CityScope and the associated review where In accordance with our commitments to put our customers first, we're covering the cost of all remedial works. Additionally, With evolving government advice on fire safety for multi storey buildings, we're working with building owners and management companies. There was a net charge of 4 £2,000,000 in the half year for a small number of developments where we have a legal liability or where relevant build issues have been identified. In total, adjusted items for the half year were £77,000,000 Our clear, well embedded Operating framework is detailed on slide 21. This underpins our balance sheet strength, which has been a fundamental to our resilience over the turbulent last 12 months. We have further strengthened our balance sheet in the half year. We closed the half year above our operating framework on land bank With 5 years owned land affecting the impact of the 1st national lockdown on completions, we will bring this back in line with our framework of around 3.5 years We're increasing completions and selective land replacement over the next couple of years. Having reset our target on land creditors in September To 15% to 25% of the owned land bank, we achieved this with land creditors equating to 21.2% of the owned land bank at the half year. We closed the half year with an excellent net cash position of £1,100,000,000 and operated with average net cash of £548,000,000 over the period. The combination of our strong cash flow performance and the pause until August 2020 on land acquisition resulted in total net indebtedness surplus of £1,000,000 at the 31st December. I will now take you through some of the detail of our balance sheet on slide 22. Our gross land bank has decreased by £200,000,000 and land creditors by £230,000,000 as a result of pausing land buying and the inevitable time delay between restarting and land steel completion. The opening WIP Balance for the half year was £220,000,000 higher than the June 2019 position and as highlighted by our completion numbers, We have worked hard to trade through this balance. Reflecting the completion performance, our December WIP balance was £201,000,000 lower than last year. This reduction is a key reason for our guidance that we will deliver less completions in the second half relative to those delivered in the first half, A reversal of our usual completions profile. Other working capital net liabilities were higher than the prior year and include a £58,000,000 reduction in part exchange which accounted for just 6% of completions, half that seen last year. The movement in other assets and liabilities reflects the full volume of our defined benefit scheme in the second half of FY twenty twenty. Net assets at 31st December were £5,200,000,000 an advance of almost £356,000,000 over the 12 months. Moving on to our cash flow on slide 23, This clearly shows the strength of our operating cash generation and the reversal of the elevated working capital investment held at the start of the year. I will take you through some of the detail. We made net cash interest and tax payments of £77,400,000 This was down £102,000,000 on last year, reflecting the fact we paid 4 quarterly installments in the first half of FY 'twenty due to the government's change in corporation tax payment regime. The cash release on Wick mentioned earlier and the reduction in part exchange properties held on our balance sheet have in combination led to a cash inflow of £272,000,000 Land spend for the half year was down £130,000,000 on the prior year at £320,000,000 As a point of guidance, we continue to expect land spend in FY 2021 to be around £850,000,000 Net cash inflow was £799,000,000 for the half year. Now some areas of guidance for FY 'twenty one are covered on slide 24. As we updated last month, we expect to deliver between 15,250,750 wholly owned completions. Alongside this, we continue to expect around 650 completions from our joint ventures. We now expect administrative expenses to be around 200,000,000 Slightly higher than the previous guidance is to increase performance related incentive costs. Our interest cost guidance is unchanged at around £30,000,000 Our year end net cash position is now anticipated to be around £700,000,000 to £750,000,000 with an average net cash position of around £700,000,000 during the year. Now to summarize on Slide 25, we delivered a strong performance in the first half with improved underlying margins And a third strengthened balance sheet. Our balance sheet strength and the recovery in both our operational and financial performance in the half underpin our dividend resumption. We are well positioned for the future. Thank you. And I will now hand over to David. Thank you, Jessica. As Jessica and Stephen have both very clearly highlighted in their presentations, We feel that we have a strong investment proposition, which I will outline on Slide 27. As you know, we aim to operate with 1 of the shortest land banks in the industry. This improves our return on capital employed and reduces our longer term exposure. Critically though, we have a very operational ready to use land bank and a good relationship between the size of our land bank and the number of outlets. As Stephen highlighted, the quality of our land bank, our site layouts and our house types gives us a great deal of confidence that there is further value to be delivered. We have a resilient balance sheet and we are clearly naturally cash generative. Our operating framework developed and steadily improved over the last 10 years has clearly delivered for our stakeholders in this unprecedented period. We have a strong and highly experienced building sales team, who operate to exacting standards and are relentlessly focused on the detail to drive efficiency and continuously improve our margin. Our quality and service performance is absolutely key to the strength of our business. And as I've said before, It is our license to operate in communities throughout the country. Our broad geographic spread gives us a diversified business that creates a balanced market exposure. Finally, we aim to lead the industry on sustainability because we understand how important this is, both for our operations and our stakeholders, both now and in the future. These differentiators put us in a very strong position to grow volumes, deliver margin improvement and generate attractive cash returns. Now looking at the market on Slide 28. 2020 has demonstrated the strong fundamentals of the market. There is strong demand for new homes across the country, evidenced both before and since The initial national lockdown ended. The government has a target of building 300,000 homes per annum to address years of under supply and government housing policy remains very supportive. As Stephen outlined, the land market remains attractive with a greater range of land buying opportunities Now coming to the market. The recent 1 month extension of the Help to Buy build completion deadline is clearly welcome. And the tapering to the scheme from the 1st April is, as Stephen outlined, something we have been planning for over 3 years. Mortgage interest rates do remain attractive and affordable in a longer term context. But this is an area that we are carefully monitoring which I will turn to next. Looking at the mortgage environment in more detail in Slide 29. Here's a chart which you've seen before showing the proportion of average income spent on monthly mortgage interest and repayments. The affordability of mortgages still remains good with mortgage costs as a proportion of earnings still usefully below the long run average. The qualification hurdles for mortgages, however, remain more As they have done since the onset of the pandemic, there remains an absence of any return to 95% lending on new build homes by any of the mainstream lenders. And only one mainstream lender has moved its LTV limit back to 90% since the onset of the pandemic. Mortgage providers have pushed mortgage rates hard to firstly control new mortgage demand given the capacity challenges faced by the banks in light of the COVID impact on both their existing customers, their employees and clearly new customers. But secondly, this is also reflects a greater perceived lending risk due to increased uncertainty. Mortgage lenders' appetite to land, particularly with the removal of access to help buy for existing homeowners will be key in the months ahead and is something we will continue to monitor. Absent an increase in LTV lending levels Help to Buy is likely to become the only way into homeownership for many first time buyers. Turning now to slide 30. Our overriding focus in the near term is rebuilding our volumes, our margin and our return on capital employed. But our longer term priorities remain. We published our vision 6 years ago to lead the future of house building by putting customers at the heart of everything we do. This defines our culture, our actions and the way we do business. Our vision remains underpinned by 4 strategic priorities. We passionately believe that we need to put the customer first to build a responsive and resilient business for the long term. We also have to build great places, communities that we are proud to build and where people are proud to live. We aim to lead construction, striving for excellence and embracing modern methods of construction and investing in our people is clearly vital. We must deploy successful strategies for both recruitment and retention, which will help us to meet the long term skills challenge faced by the entire construction industry. We aim to the leading national sustainable house builder. Supporting our vision, our priorities and our principles enables us to deliver excellent financial and operational performance and also build a resilient and sustainable business creating long term value for all of our stakeholders. Now to touch on our progress around sustainability on Slide 31. We have a clear ambition to be the leading national sustainable housebuilder. We have to deliver this through how we operate and how we drive our performance. And then also, We have to ensure that we are transparent in how we disclose our progress. We have made excellent progress With our CDP performance, improving our scores across all three disclosure areas and moving into the leadership level on Climate Disclosure. Secondly, we highlighted At full year results last September, our new targets around reducing our carbon emissions And these have now been approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative. Looking ahead, we have a clear roadmap and plan to deliver our ambitions. We have a strong solution for the future delivery of 0 carbon homes at scale. And we continue to drive to achieve net gains for biodiversity. Clearly, this is the right thing to do. It will strengthen our consumer proposition and it will make our business fitter and more resilient for the long term. I'd like to hear on Slide 32 are some of the key areas where we are engaging with stakeholders to ensure both ourselves and the wider industry can deliver the long term changes needed. We are working with our supply chain partners, both around new technologies and product development, but also to ensure that they 2 are developing across the wider sustainability agenda. We continue our active engagement with government As we push for a clear roadmap to allow our design teams, procurement specialists and our supply chain partners to develop and deliver the solutions and scales the house building industry will need to adopt over the coming years. We are educating our teams to ensure we all understand that we have a significant role to play in protecting our environment both through our individual behavior and through our the way our business must adapt as we look forward. Now to bring you up to date on current trading summarized in Slide 33. We see that it has been an excellent start to our second half. When you put it in the context of the wider economic uncertainties around us and the limited availability of unsold homes for delivery in the Q1. Our private sales rate per outlet per week through January has been 0.77%, 7% below the equivalent period last year. But this as you will remember was a particularly strong trading period reflecting the post election Boris Banks. Relative to the start of 2019, our sales rate since the 1st January is 4% better, which is clearly strong against a more normal trading period. Coupled with lower outlet numbers, this results in a net private reservation rate per week of 2.64, 10% below the prior year and 7% below the 2019 trading period. Our forward sales position, including joint ventures, remains very strong at just over £3,400,000,000 13% ahead of this point last year. And finally, as touched on by Stephen, I would just like to reiterate that we expect to maintain a stable sales outlet position through the second half. And we clearly have an ambition to grow our sales outlets as we move forward. Turning to slide 34 to conclude. Thanks to the efforts of our team, we have delivered an excellent first half performance, driving both build recovery, completions and also improving our adjusted gross and operating margins. We continue to manage the rest around COVID with health and safety remaining an overriding priority. Whilst we recognize that there are clear economic uncertainties, the housing market fundamentals remain attractive. We are also in an excellent financial position with net cash, unused facilities And we closed the half year with a stronger balance sheet than anyone could have expected 6 months ago. Our operational and financial strength create a platform for us to build the high quality sustainable homes the country needs, support and create employment to help the communities we operate in and to deliver operationally for all of our stakeholders. And we will continue to push in terms of our medium term targets on margin, volume and return on capital employed. Thank you. And I will now hand back to Jessica, the conference coordinator, and we will be very happy to take your questions. Thank The first question comes from the line of Aynsley Lammin from Canaccord. A couple of questions for me, please. First of all, just wondered if you Give a bit more color on recent sales rates. Are you seeing good demand for kind of completions post the 1st April period? Are there any regional differences? And is pricing still generally remaining firm? And then secondly, obviously, you've spoken Quite strongly about the margins and the financial metrics all getting back to kind of normal levels over the medium term. And I just wondered what your thoughts were on special dividends. Is that still an inherent part of the strategy going forward? Or is that something that you don't really want to return to as you had paid before? Hi, good morning. So I'll cover both of those and then I'll pass to Stephen, you might want to give a little bit more color just in terms of regional trends. But I mean just to say overall in terms of current trading, I mean is a relatively short period. January, as you know, is also not one of our busiest months. So I think we've got to put it in context. But when you look at the comparison, whether it be to 2020 or to 2019, I think it's a good set of numbers in terms of current trading. No question that in terms of reservations, we're seeing good trends for reservations clearly up to March, but suffering from product availability and good trends post March as well. And I'll pass to Steven in a moment just to provide a little more color. In terms of dividends, I mean, I think our policy is very clear. I mean, Jessica covered it and I covered it. We have a policy of ordinary dividends at 2.5 times cover. Clearly, we will look at our overall position in terms of indebtedness. But at this point in time, we are Just pleased to be recommencing and delivering our ordinary dividend. Yes, good morning, Ainsley. Yes, just a bit more color. As David said, we've been very encouraged by the sales rate so far this calendar year. We are selling well, and a lot of the sales we've taken are beyond the Q1 of the calendar year. So we're very positive about that. In terms of the regional situation, fairly consistent demand across the entirety of the U. K, Probably marginally strongest in Northern and Scotland, but we're very, very pleased with the sales rate nationally. We're seeing good demand and we're producing good results. And just are you able to push prices ahead at all given the kind of low product availability and good demand? Yes. Every release, we look at pricing and look to increase upwards on every sales release we review, taking into account obviously plot premiums locations and previous sales rates. The next question comes from the line of Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. My first question is on the number of outlets. Are you saying that The outlet number is going to remain stable in the second half. And is there a reason for that? I mean, you seem to have the normal environment that would support An increase. And I guess now you've digested the COVID-nineteen disruption to a large extent. That's my first question. Secondly, have you seen any disruption from Brexit in terms of material supply or anything like that so far. I appreciate we're only 1 month into it. And lastly, on the Cost of legacy properties, I guess the charge are in line with expectations. Are you expecting any further provisions into the second half or you think that the process now is more or less completed? Thank you. Arnold, hi. Good morning. Okay. Well, I'll just act as compare. So I think Jessica will pick up about legacy properties and charges. And Stephen, I know we'll be very happy to cover in terms of both outlets and and materials in the context of Brexit. So Stephen, over to you. Good morning, Al. Yes. In terms of outlets, I think what we have to bear in mind is when we opened up back in May, June time, our top priority was to bring in the completions effectively sold, and we made sure we prioritized those units in progress to bring through to completion to give the customer journey we needed. So there was a slight delay in terms of starting upon the newer sites. As I said, all the focus went into delivering units in progress. In terms of site numbers, we see H2 has been broadly stable And as planned. And in terms of site numbers going into 'twenty two and 'twenty three, We'd expect those to increase based on some of the work we were doing during the lockdown period, obviously bringing in new sites. We've looked at some of the site splits between Barrett and David Wilson on the larger developments and brought in more developments from that. So We'll expect to see the benefits of that work coming through into 202223. In terms of materials, so far so good. It's taken a lot of management time To make sure it all comes through, but I think things have actually being delivered well for us. We are aware of problems with roof tiles, internal doors, white goods, but none of those have really impacted us. The key thing for us was we made sure and are making sure we've had a 3 month buffer stock readiness for Brexit. And we've made sure that all our suppliers have had our delivery dates for all our materials right out until June 'twenty one. And as I say, it's key that we kept our suppliers informed with our plans and programs. And I think another initiative we worked with on our suppliers is Rather than bringing all the materials in from overseas through certain parts, Felix in particular, we worked with our suppliers and we're able to sort of manage to move some of the materials around other parts, particularly on the East Coast. So, so far, we've had no particular supply issues. It's taken a lot of management time to make sure it comes through smoothly, but working fine at the moment. Back to Jesse, I think. Thanks, Stephen. Thank you, Stephen. Just picking up, Arnaud, on legacy property costs. So in the first half of the year, we had legacy costs of £51,000,000 That had 2 component parts that had Cityscapes being the main part of that. And the review there is substantially complete. We provided for the costs of all works. But clearly, as works progress, the costs could change. In terms of ongoing fire safety government reviews, well, we took a charge of £4,000,000 in the first half of the year, which small number of developments. Clearly, the ongoing changes in the regulatory or legislative environment may continue to change. Everything that we're aware of at the half year has provided. But I think we've got to recognize that the safety division continues to evolve and will continue to do so over the next 12 to 24 months. So it may be possible for future costs to arrive. That's very clear. Thank you very much and well done on the results. Thank you, Jessica. Stephen, thanks. The next question comes from the line of Emily Biddulph from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. And thanks for taking my questions. I've got 3, please, all on margin. On Slide 19, on the margin bridge, you still got 80 basis points year on year of site extension If I remember right, full year results, I was assuming that I think sites took 6 months longer to build out. Is there sort of upside to that assumption at some point or sort of how should we think about that? Is that sort of still What you obviously, it's what you think is reasonable at the moment, but it's a sort of scope for ongoing upside if we sort of get back to normal building in the second half of the year. In terms of the net inflation gain of 100 basis points, presumably as we think into the second half of the year, Like you should think about price cost being at least as positive at this point. Presumably, we shouldn't sort of think about that coming back. And then on Stephen's point, just finally on the replotting, like presumably we're yet to see all of the benefits of that. Should we continue to think that you can try further gross margin gains as those benefits sort of feed through remaining sites and you sort of continue to standardize? So potentially sort of we could see gross margin move up not only into H2, but presumably into next year as well? Thanks very much. Good morning and thank you. So just in terms of the questions, and I think Jessica picks up the first question in terms of site extension costs and also the net inflation costs, which come from, As you said, Slide 19. If I pick up initially, I mean, Stephen provided a little bit of detail regarding what we're doing in terms of green plotting. I think in terms of future margin, we would just say that, look, we've said that our published hurdle rate is we're buying land a minimum gross margin of 23%. We're clearly delivering gross margin at or above that level. And we see that as being the ongoing benchmark for the business. Now, Stephen and team are clearly driving a lot of improvement, but we've also got to recognize that there are going to be some headwinds in term costs. I mean, that's inevitably going to be The case. So that improvement is not resulting at this stage and is amending our overriding guidance in terms of land intake at 23%. Jessica, would you like to pick up the other 2? Thanks. Thanks, David. Good morning, Emily. Thank you very much for your question. So So since the size extension, yes, we saw an 80 basis point impact on the margin in the first half of the year, which is consistent with what we experienced in the second half of last year. And that relates to an average duration of around 6 months. We're on track with our build programs, as Steven outlined. And clearly, if we can deliver better than a 6 month extension, and that could deliver some upside against that number. But you have to remember, there has already been a period of disruption from the lockdown and then the rebuild as we came out of that. In terms of net inflation, so obviously, the balance between sales price inflation and bill cost inflation, We continue to expect build cost inflation to be 1% to 2% this year, as Stephen outlined. In terms of pricing, we're not seeing any substantial changes in terms of the pricing that we experienced in the first half of the year. Great. Thanks guys. Emily, thank you very much, Jessica. Thanks again. The next question comes from the line of Gavin Jagiel from Barclays. Please go ahead. Just a couple for me, if I could, please. The first one is just coming back to these build costs. I wonder if you could give a bit more clarity, if you could do, on maybe expectations beyond the end of FY 'twenty one. I think you've got just over onethree of materials, I guess, booked in for the year, but beyond that would be useful. And then just think about your planning, guess, for the current Help to Buy, 3 years in the making, what are you planning for life beyond Help to Buy in FY 'twenty three? And I guess any wider comments around government For the sector would be useful. Thank you. Gavin, hi. If I pick up the second question Gavin and Stephen will pick up First question. But just to say in terms of us planning for the future, I think we've been quite cautious in terms of our approach with regard to Help to Buy. As Stephen outlined, we made assumptions going back more than 3 years ago that we would see changes to the scheme. I mean, they were being trailed at the time and were subsequently announced in 2018. And therefore, reasonably cautious assumptions in terms of land acquisition opportunities. When we look forward in terms of 2023, I mean, our assumption and what I continually say to the business is, we've got to take the position as read. So Health Why will stop in 2023 and there will be no more government support beyond that point. And that is how we are planning the business. We still see that there is going to be strong underlying demand, But we would recognize that the banks loan to values would need to expand to provide some intuition for the removal of HealthBuy. So more lending at 90% or 95% level. The industry back in 2012 introduce a mortgage indemnity solution. And the industry will again look at mortgage indemnity solution. It was successfully launched in 2012 and we see no reason why it could not be successfully launched in 2023. Now having said all of that, I think we have to recognize that the government have made some very clear statements pre Christmas that they would like to put in place some higher loan to value mortgage solution for the longer term, But we will just need to see how that unfolds. Stephen? Yes. Good morning, Gavin. In terms of build cost inflation, as a whole, as I've said, we're looking at 1% to 2% for FY 'twenty one, which is in line with the guidance we issued in September. In terms of materials, again, as I've said, around about well, 99% of our materials are now fixed for H2 and 37% are fixed for H1 of FY 'twenty two. Those deals beyond June and yet due. The only commodity we've seen a real pressure is on timber pricing. And timber, we've seen a timber increase is around about 20% for homegrown timber and 30% increase for imported timber. A lot of that is down to the U. S. Influence where they've been purchasing European timber, the timber importers are indicating to us that, that policy may change with the change of government in the U. S. And therefore European tender is expected to come back going forward. So it's too early to call FY 'twenty two. A lot of it will depend on timber. And as I say, that's currently up in the air, the timber pricing. But one thing for certain, we've got strong leverage due to our central procurement and which works worked well. In terms of labor element of costs, I think I'd normally be saying we've had pressure on bricklayer rates, but we monitor every site we're operating on. And in the last 6 months, the labor element for Brick Lane has increased by something like 0.1%. So it's absolutely minimal in terms of Brick Lane rates, which normally sort of drive up our labor costs. The only area we're getting pressure on in terms of labor is ground worker trades, but that's manageable. And of course, we need to bear in mind that the wage increase for the industry, which was due in July 2020, It was initially deferred until January 21, and that has now been further deferred until July '21. So there's been no wage increase from the joint working council until July 'twenty one. So things are pretty stable. It's similar where the pricing pressures are, and we're constantly monitoring that. Hope that helps you. That's really clear. Thanks very much indeed. Gavin, thank you. Thank you, Stephen. The next question comes from the line of Will Jones from Redburn. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning. 3 from me, if I could as well, please. Just going back to Help to Buy, obviously, in the first half The year, it got up to over 50%, I think, of your private sales for obvious reasons around the end of the prior scheme. Could you give us a feel as Roughly what share that's been since January? I appreciate it's a small period. And then just more generally on that, how you expect your Scottish business to handle the end of Help to Buy this, I think, coming later this week there. The second one was just around actually the cost of land. I think in your appendices, It looks like you've added land close to £32,000 a plot in the first half, which looks pretty low. Is there a mix issue in there? Just be To get some color on that. And then the last one was just around mix effects on the private selling price going forward. Obviously, ASPs moved up, and I think in the order book, it's around 3.35 for private. Yes. I think looking at your land bank guidance, you'd need to believe in a lower private average selling price to get to the group average, including affordable. So Should we expect the average selling price to maybe fade a little bit into FY 2022 from a mix perspective? Thanks. Lou, thanks very much. Lou, you probably appreciate that we're not together and I'm furiously scribbling this all day and Working out where I'm going to pass it to. Okay. Okay. So kind of clear, look, if I can cover Help to Buy And Jessica will pick up the ASP pricing. But if I could just start the land acquisition, I mean, I think the short answer is, We are not buying anything different from a land point of view, but there are clearly relatively low approval numbers because we were out of the market. And so inevitably there is going to be a mix effect. I mean, I would love tell you that the cost of land have fallen dramatically, but clearly that's not the case. So I think it is just that it's a mix effect on a relatively small number of units. In terms of Healthify, I think I'm not going to get into the specifics for January. But clearly, we're going to see reduced levels of health to buy on a go forward basis, partly because of the second time buyers dropping out and part was positive price caps. And that will be a fairly pronounced reduction in terms of Help to Buy participation. What I would expect to see on the other side of the equation for Help to Buy is that if you are a first time buyer Looking to buy a property really now, it is quite tricky to buy in the secondhand market unless you have a significant deposit because of the contraction of loan to values. And therefore, we would expect to see more first time bar participation coming across into the newbuild market, which is clearly very much positive for us. Just to comment on Scotland, which I'm uniquely qualified to comment on. Just to say that our helped by the helped by scheme in Scotland was significantly different to the helped by scheme in England. So a maximum capital value of £200,000 and a 15% shared equity loan. So when you look at the reservation numbers, the reservation numbers in Scotland as part of our business were very, very small. And therefore, we would not see any significant impact. But we were very surprised Nonetheless, the scheme was canceled at such short notice. So there was quite literally 1 week's notice provided that the scheme would be canceled. And I think that will be hugely disappointing for customers in Scotland who are no longer able to participate in the scheme. Just if I could pass over to you with regard to ASP movements. Thanks, David. I mean, in terms of ASP, as you can see in the first half of the year, we delivered 5 ASP of almost 320,000 and an affordable ASP of 145,000 that blended To Page 4. I think when you look into the second half of the year, we're not expecting any substantial changes in terms of the mix The ASP, as you note, in the private board or book is slightly higher. And that's really just due to the product mix that's in there. London, by its very nature and the nature of the product that we deliver, tends to be more forward sold than the rest of the business. And therefore, you have a higher proportion of blended units in the forward order book and that affects the ASP in the mix in the order book there. Your next question comes from the line of Charlie Campbell from Liberum. I've got a Couple of questions. So one is detailed and the other is a bigger picture question. But I just wonder if you could go back to Slide 18 and Really helpful chart. So thanks very much for that. And just to make sure we understand this sort of completely or I don't understand this completely, The difference between the 32 and the 24, is that entirely fixed? And also just sort of what kind of cost categories go between The sort of the blue bar and the green bar, just so we understand that. And secondly, I just wonder what the mood is like Amongst the sales people and thinking about the sort of spring season selling season as a whole. I mean, clearly, the stock market is pretty nervous about all these bad things that may or may not happen over the next few months. But what's the mood like on the ground? What are the And the same to you, what's the level of optimism from them coming through into their communications with your sales staff? Charlie, hi. Good morning. Okay, Charlie, thanks for naming the slide number. As soon as you mentioned the slide number, I knew that was So Jessica will talk you through the points on slide 18. What I'd like to do on the kind of move is just give a little bit of an overview and I'll pass to Steve. And I We update regularly in terms of our regional managing directors and talk about the backdrop in terms of customer inquiries and demand. And I would say generally, I mean, if you look at the 6 months we're just coming off the backhaul, I would say that the mood is very positive. And therefore looking into spring, I would say there's a very positive within the business. Stephen, would you like to just talk about a little bit more? Yes. I'd add to that, David. Yes, we've had a Probably a far better 6 months than we expected, Charlie. And so far, the 1st 3, 4 weeks into the calendar year, we've had a lot of activity on our sites, a lot of interest through international leave. You have to bear in mind on our sites that are only open for appointments only. So before anybody turns on-site, they must have an appointment. And our appointment system is very, very busy. It also helps because a lot of the it's a turnip appointment. It means you're talking to really genuine purchasers wanting to buy. So the conversion rate is high, and it's been very, very solid throughout the U. K. In terms of that level of interest going forward. So we're very, very pleased with that performance. Thanks, Stephen. And Jessica, if you could pick up on Slide 18. Thanks. Thanks, David. Good morning, Charlie. Just in terms of contribution. So as you know, our land minimum gross margin hurdle rate is 20 We were very clear in the second half of last year that 6 cross were driving our reduction in terms of half due profitability, and that reduced our adjusted operating margin to 5.9%. Now each home that we complete has a contribution after land and build costs, but it's purely land and build costs. The costs between the blue bar and the green bar as you picked up are items such as our site managers, our site overheads, our direct teams are delivering the developments that we build. So all the other costs that go into gross margin is purely land and built in terms of that 32%. In the first half, We clearly benefited from over recovery. We delivered higher volumes and therefore we delivered 20 3.8% adjusted gross margin, which compares to the 23% last year. As I outlined earlier, we expect that to have an opposite in H2 because we're expecting our completions to be 19% to 25% lower than H1. And therefore, that will have a dilutive effect on the full year margin. Thank you very much. That's very clear. Thank you. Charlie, thank you very much. And Jessica, thank you. Could I just say before we go to the next question that We're on a time line where we need to close at 955. So just really For Jessica, in terms of coordinating questions, we need to close at that time. The next question comes from the line of Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. I think I made the cut. So I've got a few questions. So firstly, I think the government came out the other day with the future, I think to call it building standards now. So if you could just maybe update us on your thoughts and particularly kind of the cost increases that will be incurred, I guess, I think from next year onwards and I think then perhaps a bit longer term in 2025, I think is sort of the next threshold. So if you could Summarize that for us, that would be helpful. The second question is on going back to that slide and sort of the contribution margin element. So Just to understand what you're saying for the second half. Clearly, when volumes we can work out, revenues will be lower. So you'll have a lower fixed cost recovery than you had in the first half, which is obviously quite good. But in terms of the contribution margin, is there anything we should think about? In other words, are some of the inflationary gains versus costs basically building up or do you think kind of 32% is a good run rate where I guess you're pretty much covered for the half. So you should probably know where you sit on that. So yes, I'll leave it to 2, give somebody else to squeeze in as well. Thank you. Okay. Gregor, fine. Well, look, Stephen will pick up regarding the future of home standards. So I'll just pass over to Stephen and then Jessica will cover in terms of the margin. Thanks, Stephen. Yes. Good morning, Gregor. Yes, as you said, actually, last week, the government announced The long awaited response to Part L and F, which is effectively thermal efficiency and ventilation. We've been expecting it since April last year, April 'twenty. It was then due in October 'twenty. And it's clearly the direction of travel, which we welcome towards 0 carbon. For us, it's good to have that clarity. And as you know, the government, we're looking at 2 approaches, either a 20% or a 31% reduction in emissions. As you know, they've gone for a 31% reduction in whole house emissions. That comes into legislation later this year, so the building regs change in December 'twenty one, and it will affect homes on new sites registered from June 'twenty two. In addition, there's a 1 year transition period. So effectively, that means it will apply to all plots on sites, current and ongoing, from June 'twenty three. So that means it will impact our existing sites in about 2.5 years. In terms of additional costs, what we're looking at is extra insulation in external cavity walls. We're looking at some heat recovery technology, such as gas boiler flue recovery And some photo all takes on the roofs. The additional cost of that depends on the size of the house. And for us, it's going to be between sort of 2,000 for the smaller units up to £6,500,000 for 5 beds. So typically, it was an average of between £4,005,000 We've been working with our supply chain for some time. And clearly, we've got a lot to do to make sure that we drive those costs down further before it's really introduced in 2023 in large scale. So hopefully, that gives you a bit of color and answers your question. That's helpful. Just in the midterm, is there another I believe there's a 2025 kind of further tightening, unless I'm wrong with that. Yes. In terms of Yes. In 2025, you move it to 75% from 31% clearly, although that's still got to consultation yet, but it's expected to be 5% reduction from 2025. And there, that's when you'll start seeing no gas boilers and a greater use of air source heat pumps and ground source heat pumps and items like that. But we've been factoring these costs into our liabilities and land appraisals for some time now anyway. Okay. And you have estimated the cost on that or not yet? It's too early. Not yet. Still a lot to do. We have some estimates. But we believe it will be sort of we'll be working hard to get those costs down with the supply chain. We've already entered Discussions with the key suppliers who provide the technology we'll need to use, and we'll be developing that with them in the next couple of years. And we've got people in business constantly working on that in terms of innovation. Thank you. That's helpful. Thanks, Stephen. So if I just pick up quickly on the contribution margin point, Gregor. I think if you look at Slide 18, you can see we've been consistent around the 32% for the last 2 years, And therefore, that's a very representative number. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks, Jessica. Thanks, Gregor. Your next question comes from the line of John Fraser Andrews from HSBC. Please go ahead. Thanks and good morning, everybody. 2 for me. The first is on completions. It's clear you've got your target for this year. But thinking as to when the 2019 level can be achieved, Stephen said that sites We'll nudge up over the next couple of years. Is there anything that would stop the current build rate, which is well below the 2019 level in the first half and more to the point was flagged in the second half. Is there anything to stop it recovering towards the 2019 level? And so you'll get your 2019 completions up In 2022 beyond that level? So that's the first question. And then the second question is on margin. The initiatives that you outlined on replotting With the proportion of new house types, you're at 83% on sites now, 65% on completions. That was an old initiative. Have you introduced a new initiative? And so is there more coming through that gives you a new phase of margin accretion? Thank you. Hi, it's David. I think if I just pick up both of those. So first of all, in terms of completion volumes, absolutely, we want to get the business back to We want to get the business back to FY 2019 volumes. And we really tried to maintain our business infrastructure to ensure that we have got the capacity to get back to those levels. And if you look at the way we're tracking in FY 2021, Clearly a fast recovery of volumes from the subdued levels in FY 2020, then we think it is feasible for us to get back to FY 2019 levels in FY 2022. So that's what we're going to drive harder. In terms of margin, I mean, I think the net answer is on margin that we have within our operating framework Our land intake margin must be a minimum of 23% growth. And while Stephen and the team are doing a great deal to produce improvements to our margin. The reality is we have got some costs and there are some headwinds on costs. So we still maintain our position that land intake margin would be at 23% growth. David, just a follow on to that. With the replanning that's going on that the initiatives Stephen was Discussing in your presentation, does that give you any enhancements on land you've bought already? And does it give you a new phase of that self help that seems to be fading because you're already at quite high proportions Of new house types that's coming through the P and L? Yes. I mean, for sure, in terms of sites that they're already on, as we implement these group, whether it be changes to house types or whether it be replotting existing house types in a different way on the site, Then that will give us a net improvement. But I think when you look at the overall margin trajectory, we would still guide that gross margin of 23. That is all the time we have on today's call. So I will now hand the call back to your host for any closing remarks. Jessica, yes, thank you very much. So Look, first of all, I appreciate all the questions that have come in. If there are any questions that we haven't been able to answer, Then please treat them to Jessica or to John Messenger and we will obviously pick them up. So apologies, we've got to curtail the time. But thank you very much and we will obviously be back to talk to you again in the reason with your future. Thank you. Thank you for joining today's call.