Hello, and welcome to the Barratt Developments PLC FY 2024 trading update call. My name is Laura, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this call is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only mode. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, John Messenger, Group Investor Relations Director, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you, Laura, and hi, good morning, everyone. I think everyone on the call will know the drill by now, but we are still operating under the rules of the Takeover Code until the Redrow transaction is concluded. So David, Steven, and Mike, we look to answer your questions as fully as possible today, but they may not be able to, where they are forward-looking, related to guidance or to the CMA inquiry in terms of questions asked. With that in mind, I will hand over to David. Thanks, everyone.
John, thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. As you would expect, we have Steven and Mike with me this morning and clearly John as well. So as normal, I would just like to start off by really offering my thanks to our employees, our subcontractors, and our suppliers for really their fantastic contribution in helping us to deliver such a strong operational performance. I think we move on to look at some of the information, starting with the reservation rate, and we clearly recognize that reservation rates have remained sensitive to the background in terms of mortgage availability and affordability for potential home buyers. We achieved a net reservation rate of 0.58, so 5.5% ahead of the 0.55 delivered in FY 2023.
We have seen first-time buyer activity stabilize and showing a little recovery. So first-time buyers representing 27% of private reservations, up from 25% in FY 2023. Also, for existing homeowner, homeowners, the use of part exchange increased up to 16% of private reservations, but pleasingly, our unsold part exchange stock has actually reduced on a year-on-year basis. Average sales outlets at 346, or 5.7% lower than the 367 in the prior year. And that's just reflecting the fact that we're seeing sales outlets coming to a close, where previously sales outlets had been extended because of lower reservation rates.
Then, if we look at the effect of reduced land buying activity during 2022 and 2023, as well as the outlets closing that I just mentioned, we expect average sales outlets will reduce by around 9% in FY 2025. But importantly, we expect them to return to FY 2024 levels during FY 2026. Our order book continued to adjust during the year, with the total order book consisting of 7,239 homes, down 19.5% on the order book at the end of FY 2023, but down just 14% in value terms at GBP 1.9 billion. And the private ASP in our year-end order book, excluding PRS and affordable reservations, is down 2.2%. As normal, throughout the year, our construction teams have not in any way compromised on customer service or build quality.
We've been awarded 5-star by our customers now for the 15th consecutive year, and clearly, this is a unique achievement among the national house builders. Last month, we were awarded 89 Pride in the Job Awards for site management, more than any other house builder for the 20th consecutive year. Moving on to build cost inflation. As we outlined at our interims, our total build cost inflation has come in as expected at around 5% for FY 2024. We currently anticipate that build cost inflation will be broadly flat for FY 2025. Bringing all this together, we expect adjusted profit before tax for FY 2024 will be slightly ahead of our previous expectations, and our balance sheet position remains very strong, with net cash at approximately GBP 865 million at the year-end.
This morning, we have reported additional adjusted item charges totaling GBP 192 million for the full year. These are associated with legacy properties and building safety, as well as a GBP 23 million pound charge in relation to the Redrow transaction fees. We took a first-half adjusted item of GBP 61.9 million, and this, you will remember, covered an increase in contingency based on the latest information received in relation to our obligations to refund expenditure incurred by the Government's Building Safety Fund, as well as remediation costs for atypical buildings within our portfolio. The second half charge of GBP 130 million in relation to legacy properties relates to developments we have previously identified and disclosed as requiring remediation. Just a couple of other key points to highlight from our statement. We remain absolutely committed to leading the industry in sustainability.
The eHome2, our concept home up in Salford, is providing real-world data on how the house is performing, and our group design and technical team are using this performance data to help them to deliver the most attractive and sustainable homes for customers under the Future Homes Standard. We have also maintained our position in the CDP's Global Climate Change A List for leadership. We are one of fewer than 365 companies worldwide. Turning now to the land market, where our position has moved quite significantly over the last six months. Our disciplined approach to land approvals continued during the year, and we did see an increase in the number of sites being brought to the market for sale, particularly through the final quarter.
As a result, we approved 58 new sites, equating to 12,439 plots in the year, with future land spend anticipated of GBP 647 million. Our cash land spend in FY 2024 on new land and settling land creditors reduced to GBP 680 million from GBP 823 million in FY 2023. This is clearly a reflection of the limited land approvals in FY 2023 and early FY 2024. However, with the acceleration in land approvals during the final quarter of FY 2024, we expect cash land spend will show a significant increase in FY 2025. Finally, on outlook. To recap, despite what has clearly been a challenging year, we believe that our strong operational performance has helped us to deliver slightly ahead of our previous expectations in FY 2024.
We welcome the government's urgency and focus on house building and their intention to reform the planning system, as these are key to both unlocking economic growth and tackling the chronic undersupply of new homes of all tenures that the country needs. While the macro backdrop remains challenging, particularly around market sensitivity to mortgage pricing and availability, and we have lower average sales outlets, we anticipate total home completions will be between 13,000 and 13,500 homes in FY 2025, including around 600 completions for joint ventures. We will use our robust financial position, our solid forward order book, and our reputation for great homes and customer service to allow us to respond as the market evolves over the months ahead. Steven, Mike, and I will now be very happy to take your questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We will now take our first question from Aynsley Lammin of Investec. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
All right, thanks, morning. Just wondered on the site numbers, I guess, how much of that is just the kind of sites closing ordinary course of business, as opposed to maybe you position yourself ahead of, the potential Redrow deal? And just on the kind of recent trading, I guess a bit more color around, I think you said, you're still using incentives. What house prices are doing generally across the country, did you see any slowdown into the election, and your expectations for the second half would be helpful? Thanks.
Yeah, Aynsley, hi, good morning. I mean, if I, if I pick those up, so first of all, no, I mean, any change in relation to site numbers has no bearing in relation to the proposed acquisition of Redrow. I think what we're seeing is just two effects. One is that when you look at the site approval numbers for the second half of FY 2023 and the first half of FY 2024, we basically approved net zero sites. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is that clearly, sites that we did have are now coming to an end.
But as I outlined in the overview, and as in the statement, we've had a really good period of approvals over the last six months, and we see that we have good momentum in the market. Hence, we're flagging, although site numbers will dip in FY 25, we expect them to fully recover in FY 26. And then just in terms of the market, overall, I mean, as you know, Aynsley, we always seek to avoid kind of disaggregating reported periods. But just to touch on a few areas. I mean, first of all, we said in the release that we, you know, we think that prices are down round about 2%. Now, that's not necessarily all mix adjusted, but, you know, that's some sort of indication in terms of what we've seen in the market.
I think that will be fully consistent with what we're seeing in terms of the national stats. Incentive levels, we've previously said, previously said that incentive levels are running up maybe around 6%. I don't think we've seen any great change in terms of incentive levels. And then in the run up to the election, I mean, I think inevitably, people have been focused on the election, and so there's been a little bit of slowdown. I think we're struggling to disaggregate that from the election and from everyone watching the football. But, there's been a little bit of slowdown, but nothing major to call out.
Right. Just one quick follow-up, actually. You say you expect profits to be mostly ahead of expectation, your expectations. I think consensus PBT is around GBP 360 million, 357, I think. Is that kind of consistent with your expectations, the consensus number?
Aynsley, hi, it's Mike Scott. Unfortunately, that's one we're not going to be able to answer this morning beyond what we said in the statement, just because we're in the sort of takeover, the offer period. So sorry, but you'll have to wait until September for that one.
Okay, fair enough. Thanks very much.
Okay, Aynsley, thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from Will Jones of Redburn Atlantic. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Morning. three from me, please. Just, like, exploring kind of moving parts for June 25. Obviously, you've given us a volume view. Could you help us with the sales rate assumption, broadly speaking, that underpins that? And just big picture, what you would want and expect the order book to be doing this time next year and just certainly the medium-term position versus following year co-completions. The second one was around margin for the year ahead. But you, I'm not sure if you can give a view or not at this stage, but clearly we'd expect some drag from volume, but with build costs flat, do you think there's a chance of a price cost positive?
Are there any other kind of cost actions on the core business? And then just on, around the net cash, I suppose, just anything you'd help us with regard to fire safety, unspent year ahead versus that GBP 865 base, I think. Thank you.
Okay. Will, hi, good morning. Thank you. So I'll, I'll deal with the first two, and then Mike will talk about sort of net cash and cash spend and so on. I, I think in terms of the, the sales rate, I mean, you know, I think we've got to be reasonably careful that we talk through that. But what, what I would say is we're, we're expecting something similar. So we, we've also reported a sales rate that is slightly up in FY 2024 compared to FY 2023. You know, I think that's a reasonable starting point in terms of looking at FY 2025. In terms of the order book, you know, we, we don't feel that we're under lots of pressure to increase the order book. I mean, clearly, when the market was very strong, we were more forward sold.
So I don't think we'd be looking at something completely different in terms of the order book on a unit basis as we move through to the end of FY 2025, compared to 2024. And then in terms of margin, to save Mike making the point again, is that this is something that we've been told that we just can't go towards at all in terms of that forward guidance. So I think I feel like we're ducking it. You know, normally, we're very happy to take on any questions, but I think we've really got to come back on the question in September. Mike?
Yeah, well, so let me just pick up on cash. So, in terms of moving parts, broadly, just under two-thirds of that line of credit, so the number will be paid out, in FY 2025, so I think just, just shy of GBP 300 million. And building safety, I mean, we are making good progress on the mediation. We've seen, you know, a good number of sites, actually underway now, so I'd expect the spend on building safety to be, you know, probably around GBP 80-100 million for, for FY 2025, which is, a similar level to, to what we spent in FY 2024. And overall, on cash, you know, we obviously still have the cash balance.
We're very focused on maintaining the strength of the balance sheet because it gives us the flexibility to, you know, to operate in the market, and we've obviously been very active on land in the second half. But overall, our policy on that hasn't really changed, which is, you know, that we're very focused on growing the business and using that cash to buy land and, you know, take advantage of the flexibility that we have.
Thank you. And I guess just on that last point, presumably you're happy that the step up in activity in the last six months has kind of met the hurdles of the business as to that market corrected as you had?
Yeah. I mean, look, we're, as you know, we've got a very disciplined approach to land. And we don't bring any land into the business that's, you know, that's under hurdle rates because, you know, we want to maintain that discipline. So yeah, we've absolutely been focused on that, and as we come through, the market has been very competitive. But, you know, we've been holding the teams' feet to the fire on it and making sure that they maintain that discipline on the land we bring in.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Gregor Kuglitsch of UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, good morning. So a couple of questions, please. So just wanted to understand sort of the outlook on the sort of site recovery in 2026. I guess I want to understand how much that depends on land buying in the next 12 months, and just give us a number, perhaps, I don't know, in cash or unit terms, whichever you prefer, maybe compared to what you've just done. I think it'd be, like, a little bit over 12,000 units, I think like GBP 600-700 million of cash, or GBP 600 million of cash spend. So basically, how much does that have to step up for you to actually achieve that sort of recovery, which I think is like a 10% recovery in site count in year two?
And then maybe, sort of following on with the hurdle rates, of the, I think, which I think are 23% growth. Can you just share with us if there's any sort of—does that require basically a recovery in group volumes somehow, or is it also achievable at the current rate? So basically, the new land that's coming into the funnel, is that achieving the 23% growth at the current volume run rate, or not? Thank you.
Okay, Gregor, fine. I mean, if I start off on that, Mike may want to add in. But in terms of site recovery, I mean, I think that we're, you know, we are assuming that we're going to be back in the land market buying normal levels of land, given our output. And therefore, if we're predicting that volumes will be in the order of 13-13.5 thousand, then you would expect that we would be buying 15,000 or 16,000 plots per annum, and that the average site size would be similar to what we've seen in the average site size in our approvals that we've announced this morning. So I don't think there's any acceleration required, beyond where we are.
What we have done a lot of, and Steven's kind of led with the team over the last two years, is that really, since we've stepped out of the land market, we've done a huge amount in terms of bringing Barratt onto David Wilson sites, bringing David Wilson onto Barratt sites, so essentially optimizing our existing land bank. And secondly, we've also done a degree of swapping with other house builders, but we're not assuming any more of that optimization or necessarily any more swapping with other house builders. Clearly, for us to influence, I mean, I know it's kind of obvious, Gregor, but for us to influence the average site count, you know, we don't need to be adding huge numbers of sites. So we can move the site count quite substantially if we're adding 20 or 30 sites.
And we feel that when you look at the profile of site openings, we have a lot of sites that are already in our portfolio that are scheduled to open at the end of FY 25, and will therefore be there all the way through FY 26. So we don't need to buy any land really to achieve that, because they're already within our portfolio. In terms of hurdle rates, I mean, I think the answer is yes. We believe that at a site level and at a group level, we can achieve the hurdle rates. And I think you... You know, it's probably just helpful to put in context that we, you know, we made some decisions in the latter part of 2022 that we were very public about it, that we would seek to maintain capacity.
So we would follow a strategy of not closing divisions, but we would put in place a recruitment freeze. We've seen very significant reductions in headcount, so our overall headcount is down by 900-1,000 people, compared to where we were in October 2022. We believe that that is very significant in terms of headcount reduction relative to any house builder. We clearly, you know, we've taken the view of maintaining that capacity. So clearly, that kind of headcount reduction will flow through on a full year basis. And we're happy that the, you know, the sort of central overhead has been adjusted accordingly.
Okay, and maybe a final question in terms of sort of the changing government. I've seen lots of announcements, and maybe it's still early days, but your sort of take, and specifically, how, how that will impact you, perhaps, I guess, with an eye towards speed and how, how quickly you think it can have an impact?
Well, Gregor, I think we've said before, and I've said a number of times over the last few years, that when you look at the Labour government's assessment of housing need, whether you're looking at it today or you were looking at it 10 years ago, their assessment of housing need has always been greater than the Conservative government's assessment of housing need. So therefore, for house builders, at least the plan would generally be under a Labour government to build more houses. So that is clearly a positive. Secondly, when you look at the Labour in opposition, we've seen, for example, Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook has held that brief for around three years, and I think is very, very familiar with the brief, as is the Secretary of State, as is the Chancellor.
And so I think the really good thing has been the speed of response. So for us to be in a situation that inside a week, we have got very clear statements of intent in terms of planning and housing delivery, looks very, very positive to us in terms of a backdrop.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We will now take our next question from Charlie Campbell of Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Had a couple of questions, please. Just first of all, just on pricing. I'm just wondering if you'd seen any sort of positive tension in pricing over the last sort of month or so, just sort of thinking about inflection points, either in kind of headline pricing or kind of incentives reducing. And then the second question, as we think about FY 25, would you encourage us to be thinking about kind of a sort of smaller number of bulk deals, or should we think kind of bulk is just sort of feature even going through FY 25? Thanks very much.
Charlie, hi, good morning. So, I mean, I think in terms of pricing, I would say there's nothing really to call out on pricing either. I mean, I know I touched on incentives earlier, but whether you're looking at gross price or you're looking at incentives, nothing noticeable, I would say, in the last month or the last three months. In terms of sort of bulk or multi-unit sales, well, we see that absolutely as being a feature of the delivery going forward. So I think if you go back to the beginning of 2022, we announced at that point in time that we were signing up to a partnership with Citra as part of Lloyds Bank, and Citra is delivering private rental on a large scale.
And we've been a you know I think a key partner of Citra over that period of time. And we've also developed relationships with a number of other private rental vehicles. And so we absolutely see that as being a key thing going forward. And we're also seeing in some cases that some of the housing associations have appetite to do multi-unit sales, not necessarily on the same scale, but that has also become part of the market. So we will continue to look at those opportunities on a selective basis, partly to do with size of site and partly to do with the economics of the deals. But we would definitely see that as being part of our mix going forward.
Sorry, just to follow up on that. I mean, the same sort of proportions as FY 2024, or do you think that that might kind of lower a bit as private activity perhaps picks up?
I think probably similar, you know, that we're not gonna set out to achieve the same proportions, but I think something similar, I would say, is where we would be looking to head.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions in queue currently. As a final reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. I don't see any questions coming through. I will now hand it back to David for closing remarks.
Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, everyone, for dialing in. I appreciate you taking the time, and we'll be back with full year results on the 4th of September. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. Stay safe. You may now disconnect.