Okay, good morning everyone, and welcome to Harworth Group's 2025 half-year results presentation. We're delighted you could join us today, and I'm delighted that Kitty is back from maternity leave and here with me. Between us, we're going to present the results over the next 25 minutes or so, and then we'll open the floor to questions. We're going to take questions from everybody in the room here first, but for those joining online, please submit your questions, and we'll do our best to answer as many as possible. Turning to the highlights, I'm pleased with the progress that the business has made during the first half of the year. There's a lot going on across our portfolio, and we are continuing to make good, solid progress against our strategic objectives.
The market backdrop remains tricky as businesses navigate through the impact of last October's budget and the market view on the economy, with any expected early improvement not quite there yet. That said, for Harworth Group, we're a through-the-cycle business with a clear strategy, strong execution, and our core sectors of industrial and logistics and residential remain in structural undersupply, and we have a strong land bank to deliver into these markets. Through the year, we've been utilizing our balance sheet and investing across our sites to support both sales and future development. Strong operational momentum underpins progress against our strategy and has delivered solid growth at a gross assets level. Our industrial and logistics assets have performed well and are the main drivers of value at a portfolio level, delivering an 8% property return and are a key driver of future growth.
Residential assets were stable at a headline level, though with some mixed valuation outcomes in this period, and this has impacted our total accounting return, which remains positive and moving us forwards towards our £1 billion of EPRA NDV target. Kitty will cover this in more detail as we move through the presentation. All of this is reflected in the strong organic growth that we've driven at a gross asset level, up 53% to just shy of £945 million since the end of 2020. In the same period, we sold £607 million of land and property assets, reinvesting the capital whilst managing our leverage at one of the lowest levels in the sector. Our EPRA NDV is up by 41% to £725 million in the same period, consistently growing year on year through the volatile markets of, in particular, the last three years.
For half one 2025, we've delivered a total accounting return of 1.1%. In the first half of 2025, we've invested just under £55 million in our industrial and logistics sites. £32.3 million was spent on development, largely infrastructure works across a range of sites, from moving the ASICs and starting enabling works at Wingates, which some of you will remember from the site tour in the summer, to completing the development platforms at Chatterley and building at Droitbridge. Of course, we're making good progress enabling the Skelton Grange site for Microsoft. In the period, we've completed an 80,000 square foot development at the Advanced Manufacturing Park, which was pre-let technical, and this asset has now transferred into our investment portfolio. Post-period end, we reached practical completion on a 169,000 square foot building at Droitbridge.
At Waverley, we also completed one of the final pieces of community infrastructure, opening our Olive Lane development, which provides a high street and community and health centers for the residents, students, and businesses across the site. At the end of quarter one, we invested £22.5 million in land assembly, including buying our JV partner's share of Gateway 45 for £20 million. Gateway 45 is adjacent to our Skelton Grange site on the edge of Leeds, and probably one of the best sites in West Yorkshire. It has outline planning consent for 800,000 square feet and excellent offsite infrastructure already in place. A major win after four years of engagement with local and central government was the lifting of the high-speed T safeguarding in the summer, which now releases this site fully for development. We continue to progress a substantial volume of industrial and logistics product through the planning process.
In half one 2025, we submitted applications for 4.9 million square feet, with our Northern Gateway joint venture and Junction 15 sites making up the bulk of this volume. 71% of our 34.6 million square foot pipeline now has planning consent or is in the planning process. Since period end, we've submitted further planning applications at Dysworth in the Midlands and Gonnerby Moor on the A1, which will unlock volume in our medium-term pipeline. At the half year, 8.7 million of our industrial and logistics pipeline had a planning consent, and we were active across 66% of this part of the pipeline. As in 2024, we've continued to invest in enabling works to de-risk the site through delivery through half one 2025 and to make our sites as liquid as possible.
These are crucial years in the delivery of our strategy as we create capacity from our consented land to deliver at scale into our regional markets. We're focused on putting the business in the best possible position to capitalize on opportunities as we continue to de-risk sites through planning and investment. At the period end, we progressed a sizable pipeline with 2.4 million square feet of enabling works completed at sites such as Chatterley Valley near Stoke, Gateway 36 at Barnsley, and the Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham.
We're currently on site with a further 3.3 million square feet at sites such as Gascoyne Wood, Wingates, and Skelton Grange in Leeds, where we're delivering both the second phase of serviced land to enable the remaining payment from Microsoft at £53.5 million, which is targeted for the end of 2026, but also the remaining 300,000 square feet of pipeline from the Harworth land. We remain on track to transform our investment portfolio to 100% Grade A by the end of 2027. At half one, 66% of assets by value are Grade A, up from 18% at the end of 2020. In the period, we've transferred over 80,000 square feet Grade A asset at the Advanced Manufacturing Park into the portfolio, with a further 169,000 square feet from the Droitbridge development reaching completion post-period end.
We continue to recycle capital by selling secondary assets, having sold 434,000 square feet in the year to date across two assets. Taking the post-period end activity into account, this will give us a pro forma of 71% of assets by value being Grade A and 58% by area. The eagle-eyed of you amongst you in the room will have noticed that the pro forma value number in the pack is different to that that's on the screen, but the percentages are correct. With that, I'll now hand over to Kitty.
Thank you, Lynda, and good morning everyone. It's great to be back in the room and to see you all again. I seem to have been gifted some bugs from the back-to-school crew at home, so bear with me if I sneeze or cough or need a tissue or a drink. Let's get looking at the portfolio. Our overall portfolio was valued at £944 million as of 30th of June and is two-thirds weighted to industrial and logistics, including strategic land, major developments, and the investment portfolio. The industrial and logistics land bank, mostly through freehold land and options, has the potential to deliver 34.6 million square feet, and the residential land bank through freehold land and planning promotion agreements has the potential for over 31,000 plots.
Both plot numbers and square footage have increased since year-end, as we aim to maintain our land bank duration, and all parts of the portfolio increased in value in the first half. These gains in value and scale reflect our active asset management and targeted acquisitions, resulting in a substantial portfolio with significant latent value. The investment portfolio is valued at £319 million and has performed well in the first half. Annualized headline rental income grew by 4.6% over the period. Leasing activity was 2% higher on a like-for-like basis, with renewals and rent reviews achieving on average a 16% uplift to previous passing rents. The investment portfolio is overall reversionary, with headline rental income 15% below year-end ERVs. As the proportion of Grade A assets increases, the rental tone has strengthened further, with rent per square foot rising 6.3%.
Vacancy levels have reduced through successful lettings and changes in portfolio mix, and I'm delighted to say that since period end, we have let the final unit at Gateway 36. Including this and taking out secondary assets sold since June, this would reduce vacancy further to 3.1%. In transfers on the graph, we completed the building for Technicut at the Advanced Manufacturing Park, which included the incorporation of renewable energy for an innovative green lease structure, and this transferred into the investment portfolio during the period. This portfolio continues to provide a steady rental stream, supporting our overheads and offering opportunities to add value, and it remains a vital cornerstone of our funding strategy. Now, looking ahead, we will maintain disciplined asset management, developing new Grade A properties to hold while selectively selling assets, ensuring a high-quality and liquid portfolio.
Turning now to residential, we submitted planning applications for 1,200 plots during the period. This included 900 plots at Kevin Park near Wrexham, and we submitted 300 plots at our Colville site, leveraging our prior infrastructure investment to increase available plots. Combined with our applications made in 2024, we now have over 3,000 residential plots progressing through the planning system. The portfolio comprises over 31,000 plots, and alongside our freehold ownerships, we continue to add different structures, such as delivery partnerships and capital light structures. Most recently, we've conditionally exchanged on a new strategic partnership with the Church Commissioners for England, where the joint venture will deliver a significant mixed-use development of 1.2 million square feet of employment space and around 1,500 residential plots.
Importantly, 44% of the residential pipeline is either consented or actively moving through planning, an essential step in value creation and building a strong service land pipeline. Following planning consent, residential land is serviced in phases to meet demand from house builders and mixed-tenure developers. Currently, 69% of land with planning consent has enabling works underway on site as part of our phase delivery. We've seen solid demand for land in the first half of the year. We sold 649 plots in half one, a mixture of planning promotion agreements and freehold land sales, and since period end, a further 146 plots have completed. We also have around 1,500 plots conditionally exchanged and in legal process for sale in the second half, and once these complete, we're on track to exceed our 2,000 plot sales target for the year. Alongside house builder sales, we remain active with our mixed-tenure proposition.
So far this year, we've reached practical completion on our first phase of affordable housing at Great Places, with homes now occupied, and we're active on delivering on two further sites. Accelerating residential sales supports our capital efficiency by recycling funds from mature sites into early-stage residential and industrial and logistics developments. All our schemes have placemaking initiatives, and we've continued to be active throughout 2025, including achieving practical completion of two forest schools on our Thoresby Vale and Colville sites, opening in time for the new school year. Turning now to the financial performance of the group. Our key financial metric is EPRA NDV, which reflects our net assets adjusted to show the current value of our property portfolio as at 30th of June. This value is independently assessed every six months and reported in our accounts.
In the first half of 2025, our EPRA NDV increased by 0.8% to £725 million. Growth was driven by rental income, fees, and development management revenue, which is included under net revenue on this slide, as well as valuation gains from management actions focused on maximizing the potential of our development sites. These gains were partially offset by operating costs, interest, and dividends. This steady progress in NDV moves us closer to the billion-pound target for the end of 2027. Turning to the detail of value gains, the main component of the valuation movements, our industrial and logistics portfolio delivered a strong performance. Value gains reflecting a property return of 5% were driven by management actions in strategic land and major developments.
For example, at Wingates, heavy investment in servicing land combined with rising rents in the northwest market contributed to these gains, and at Drivbridge, we were on site close to completing our Grade A building, all contributing to an 8% return in the land part of the portfolio. This moves us closer to our target of delivering 4 million square feet of built space or serviced land sales by 2027. Additionally, our investment portfolio saw value gains of 1.6% in the first half, supported by active asset management, successful lettings, and a rental market providing growth. Combined with the rent yield from this part of the portfolio, it gives a total property return of around 4.1% for this part in the first half.
Turning to the residential portfolio, one of its key roles, especially for more mature sites, is to generate cash through land sales, which we then reinvest into the business for value creation. The residential value performance this half was mixed. Strategic land was flat as planning applications were put into the system. These remain at the beginning of their planning journey and will generate value as approvals progress. In major developments, demand for serviced residential land remains strong, with 649 plots sold in period, and this was reflected in the headline valuations, which remained stable, with some sites increasing in value. We saw some rising delivery costs, some one-off, which led to a 3% reduction in valuation. Additionally, cost increases related to site-wide infrastructure works on prior sales, reflected in losses on sale, contributed to an overall -5% property return on residential land and development sites.
These cost increases were concentrated in two particular areas. Broadly, one-third was cost inflation in horizontal costs and professional fees, with two-thirds site-specific one-off costs that we do not expect to be repeated. Looking ahead, demand remains healthy, and we are optimistic about exceeding our 2,000 plot sales target for the year. Overall, the portfolio achieved value gains of £15.5 million in the first half, and this represents 2% growth across the entire portfolio. Activity across our industrial and logistics assets was the main driver of these gains, outperforming the market. Residential valuations were stable, impacted by some cost increases focused on a small number of sites. With a loan-to-value at 19% at half year, this remains within our long-standing guardrails of a maximum of 25% mid-year and a maximum of 20% at year-end.
Our net debt increased from £46.7 million at the end of 2024 to £179.4 million at June 2025. As Lynda's spoken about, the increase was mainly driven by development spend, as we've progressed works on our sites to create value ahead of year-end sales. This year, the weather was particularly good for enabling works, even in the north, and we were able to move sites forward at speed. Additional factors include payment of tax following sales at the end of last year, and these increases were partly offset by proceeds of sale received during the period. As we entered the second half, we had £59.8 million in cash and available revolving credit facilities, which we've maintained over the summer, with development spend funded by sales proceeds.
Looking forward to year-end, with strong visibility on land and property sales, which is expected to reduce loan-to-value from the current 19% down to a range of between 10% and 15%. We will continue investing in our sites and making selective land assembly acquisitions in half two. Rent and fee income is expected to broadly cover our operating costs, and proceeds from serviced land and property sales, along with deferred consideration from prior sales, will generate a positive cash flow in the second half. This will come together to reduce net debt. This cash flow pattern I've spoken about before, which reflects our normal seasonal cycle, with higher facility drawdowns mid-year to fund site investments, balanced by repayments from property sales at year-end. This approach ensures we maintain financial flexibility to support growth going forwards. Our portfolio is entering an exciting new phase where site delivery is really now accelerating.
We remain committed to building strong partnerships, developing our substantial pipeline, and using capital efficiently to drive growth. We announced yesterday that I'll be expanding my role, and I'm excited to be leading our strategic and funding partnerships, refining our capital allocation, and aligning with our sustainability priorities, all key pillars for this next stage of growth. I'll now hand you back over to Lynda to take you through the outlook and the roadmap to reach £1 billion EPRA NDV.
We've successfully grown our industrial and logistics land bank, progressing sites through planning and into delivery. We're investing to create a scalable platform, a deliverable pipeline, and a strong ability to respond to market opportunities. The growth in our plan accelerates in the latter years, as having invested significantly in enabling works in 2024 and 2025, we intend to deliver around 4 million square foot of capacity into the market as we go through the period 2025 to 2027. This will be delivered through a mix of built to hold, built to suit, forward funding, and serviced land sales. While this part of the portfolio is in delivery, we continue to invest in around 5 million square foot of enabling works to unlock significant development capacity in the coming years.
The graphic, which may be familiar to those of you who saw our year-end results presentation, reminds you of the volume of enabling works and serviced land and development that we're targeting by the end of 2027. We're making really good progress, and as I've already mentioned, we've completed 2.4 million square foot of enabling works and are on site with a further 3.3 million square foot. This demonstrates that we're making good headway in creating the development pipeline to deliver our strategic objectives. In the year to date, we've completed the first two built to hold assets, which are now in the investment portfolio, illustrated by that tiny orange bar in the bottom right-hand corner. Over time, you'll see the bars on the right-hand side of the graphic fill up to reflect the progress as we accelerate through the next couple of years.
We remain focused on scaling the business and investing to progress towards our billion EPRA NDV target. Since the end of 2020, we've delivered cumulative growth of 40.5%, which equates to a compound annual growth rate of around 7.7%. The chart illustrates the key elements driving us to a billion. Having built a deliverable pipeline, we have a line of sight on what we need to do to get there. There's no silver bullet. As we continue to invest the cash that we generate to drive the land bank forward, it's a mix of these components and our ability to flex and respond to market conditions and pivot into opportunities that will deliver sustainable growth and value creation. In summary, we've opened up the next generation of sites in our portfolio, and we've built a scalable platform that supports value growth across all areas.
Our land bank is one of our superpowers. We have sites with planning consents in strong locations across the regions that can deliver at scale. We continue to invest through the cycle to make our sites liquid, putting us in a strong position to both deliver capacity into the market as it improves and capitalize on emerging sectors. Our specialist skill set spans a number of these core growth sectors, and we have a strong track record of delivery. We have clear visibility of the pipeline opportunity presented by our sites, and we have confidence in delivering our strategic targets. Our long-term through-the-cycle business model means that we navigate short-term uncertainties and remain focused on creating long-term value for our shareholders. With that, I'd like to thank you for your continued support and attention, and we look forward to answering your questions. Thank you for listening.
Thank you all. We've had a number of questions pre-submitted and submitted live. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please type them into the Q&A box situated on the right-hand side of your screen. Our first question, in terms of your industrial and logistics development, what is build to suit and how does it differ from forward funding?
With a build to suit transaction, what will happen is we'll make a land sale. We'll realize that land sale, and then we will build a building for an end occupier who is effectively the purchaser of the land. The land moves out of our balance sheet, and then we build. It's funded by them, and we take either a fee or a profit share on the way through that build. With a forward funding, it's not that dissimilar. We would usually secure a pre-let for a forward funding in advance. Rather than it being the end occupier, we have a tenant that's lined up, and then an investor will purchase the land and then fund us again on a monthly sort of basis as we deliver the building for that pre-let or that tenant.
We will get a profit share or, again, a proportion of a fee as we go along, but typically sort of a profit share at the end. Once it's complete, it transfers over to that investor. A subtly different, but slightly similar sort of language that you hear sometimes is a forward sale rather than a forward fund. In that instance, almost the completed building is pre-sold to an investor. In that, we would then, again, there's usually a pre-let tenant attached, and we would sort of build for that investor. Once it's complete, the whole thing sort of transfers over to the investor. It's some different sort of structures.
The way I think about it when we think about the 60% of the development pipeline that we're going to deliver through these sorts of structures is they're really for us about a land sale within different components of profit that we're taking over and above the straight land sale.
Thank you. The Microsoft and Frasers land sales are big wins. What % of 2025-2026 revenue do you expect from similar landmark or large-scale land deals?
I'll pick this one up. We have a steady flow, particularly as we get into the second half of the year, of land sales and transactions that we're making under the strategy. This is attached to the residential portfolio where we're targeting 2,000 sort of plot sales per annum. We track towards that because it's really important as we go through the years. We're drawing debt in the early part of the year, and we're generating revenue from sales to pay that debt down. Another core component of revenue generation from us when it comes to sales actually comes from, at the moment, mainly sales of some of those more secondary assets that sit in our investment portfolio.
What we expect to see as we switch through the remaining years of the strategy is that you'll see more serviced land actually coming into play from the industrial and logistics portfolio to drive sales. I think it's important to talk a little bit about Microsoft and actually a transaction that we did a couple of years ago called Kellingley. We will, if we find the right opportunities to drive value, take those opportunities to dispose of whole sites. When you look at what it means between 2025 and 2026, 2025 is quite a big year for us investing in infrastructure. We still have a sales program that's largely coming from residential sales and those sales of some of the more secondary investment assets. As we get to 2026, you should see towards the end of that year the second part of the Microsoft transaction completing. That should bring the other £53.5 million in.
Thank you. How sensitive are your valuations to delays in local authority planning departments, which are often under-resourced, or to infrastructure delivery that may not be fully in your control?
Maybe we do this in two parts. If I talk a little bit about planning and then Kitty can bring to life some of the infrastructure delivery bits that might not be in our control in terms of what happened in the first half of the year. The way that the values of sites is on a residual valuation basis. When a site is going through planning, there is a really heavy risk weighting attached to the valuation of the site at the beginning of that process, which as the site gets closer to planning, actually starts to drop away. At the point you've got your planning consent, you typically get a kick up in valuation because the site now has a consent and is ready for the next phase of what we do with it to bring it into delivery.
Once it gets to development, you've still got a residual valuation going on. That reflects a couple of things here. One is the investment that we need to make in the site to make it a service site. The other bit is actually delivery risk because until you have finished putting the infrastructure in the site, there is an element of risk from a market perspective. It's probably good to bring this to life in terms of what happened on some of the resi sites.
Absolutely. As we go through those valuation processes, we get an update every six months on the costs that it's going to be to complete the development. They're prepared by third-party cost consultants, so we get that independent view to challenge our own assumptions around that. What we saw at the first half is we saw some of our residential valuations going backwards, and some of this is related to those cost plans of movements. For instance, we saw an element of cost inflation coming through. We also saw some changes in some of the costs associated with adopting our drainage facilities at our Waverley site, which is a site that we've been in for a very long time. Those come through because partly the inflation we're then assessing at that point in time. What's happened to costs? What's happened to inflation?
How's that going to ripple across the whole portfolio? Any increase in inflation is implied for all future costs. We obviously maintain a contingency within the costs as well. That element is slightly out of our control. We have to make sure that we retain that contingency, but it's appropriate to reflect costs as they come through. With the Waverley drainage, what we saw in the first half was we have now got to a critical size on Waverley where we have enough homes occupied, and that triggers the drainage to be adopted, which is a good thing. It transfers the risk off. Because we've been in the site for quite a period of time, what we saw was as we have been working with the statutory bodies, they're requiring something different in order to update that drainage.
It's not something that we expect to be a challenge across other sites. It's very specific to Waverley, and partly because actually we've been selling land there for really quite some time. Catching up to meet some specific requirements that they've got, that's an example of some costs that were hard to anticipate, I suppose. We've seen them come through. To the best of our abilities, we are forecasting those costs and then almost like refining them every six monthly periods of testing ourselves. Are they right? What do we know now? How can we update them so that we've got the latest picture as we go forwards?
What happens if servicing and remediation costs on a large site spiral? Are those borne entirely by Harworth or shared with buyers?
It depends on the basis that we've contracted to deliver the land. If you take a residential sort of site, as we go through the early part of the year, we'll put phases of land at sites into the market. We'll agree a price through a competitive process with whichever house builder we're going to sell that to. Part of that arrangement will be that we'll actually deliver the most serviced site for the contract to complete. We retain a charge over the land. There's often a phased payment in the residential transactions. We'll retain a charge over the land until that payment has been completed to us.
Largely, once we have contracted a price for the land and agreement to service, any cost risk will be borne by Harworth unless there is something specific in the agreement that we've got with a house builder or another counterparty to counter that. There are examples where you might do that. You might sometimes insure a risk if you think there's a particular quirk around a site. Sometimes you may also have some sort of cost cap, beyond which cost may shed. It really depends on the contract that you've got in place to deliver the site. They're different from an industrial and logistics perspective to a residential perspective. Residential will have phased payments. As I said, we'll obtain a charge on the land.
Normally, when we're doing industrial and logistics disposals, it's a straightforward agreement to provide a serviced site, and then the payment is a bullet at the end.
Yeah, I suppose whether we're taking sort of increased costs over that timeframe also partly depends on the contract. Have we done sort of a fixed sort of build contract with the contractor? Is it the contractor's fault if there's an overrun? We spend quite a lot of time doing due diligence around the sites to try and ascertain what are we working with before entering into those contracts so that we can again manage that risk of cost increases as best we can.
How much of your dividend is underpinned by recurring income, and how do you balance dividends with reinvestment in new land or infrastructure?
We have a recurring income stream through the investment portfolio. We've got annualized rent of about £18.5 million now, and that's grown over the last couple of years. It's shrunk as we reposition the portfolio, and now it's very much on an upward trajectory. We supplement that with fee income as well. In the first half, we've got some fee income through development agreements where we are delivering service land or the affordable housing, for example, for end purchases and also fees associated with planning promotion agreements. We've got about £4 million of planning promotion agreements in the first half. The combination of those income streams goes quite a long way towards covering the overheads and the dividends, with the balance supplemented by land sales.
Those land sales, we now have quite a strong track record of delivering north of £100 million of land sales every year, a combination of residential and industrial and logistics. There is that recurring element to those land sales too. Our aim is to grow the investment portfolio, so we're targeting growing it to about £900 million by 2029. Part of the reason for that is to give us that increased income that goes further towards covering those costs and the dividend. When it comes to reinvestment, we absolutely prioritize the dividend. We've had a policy of growing it by 10% every year, which we've been doing now for must be 10 years. I think we've been doing it since listing, so quite a long track record of that. There's no proposal to change the dividend policy at the moment.
When we're thinking about the reinvestment, it's all about prioritizing that capital. Where do we want to put it to maximize returns? Where do we need to put it to make sure that the pipeline is in the right place? If we look at the first half, we've prioritized spending £20 million on Gateway 45 and buying out our joint venture partner there. That creates a massive opportunity for the group. It's 800,000 square feet next door to our Skelton Grange site. We're always assessing those. Because we're typically making that reinvestment decisions without long-term contracts that we're tied into, it enables us to be quite flexible in terms of where we invest the balance sheet to ensure that we're driving forwards at the right pace.
Would you ever consider spinning off your industrial and logistics assets into a REIT to highlight recurring income separately from lumpy development sales?
I think, as a starter for 10 on this one, what I would say is our focus is basically to make sure that we're actually always doing things that are in the best interest of our shareholders. At the moment, when you look at that portfolio, and Kitty sort of referenced it in our last answer, our current strategy is to grow it to £900 million by the end of 2029. That's for a number of reasons. It's core to our funding, for one. It's not just about the recurring income that it throws off and actually growing that. It's actually the security for our lenders. We're funded through a revolving credit facility. The lenders require some security, and they don't really like putting it against a strategic land bank. It plays a really important role in our funding and revenue generation. It's also pretty fundamental to the growth.
One of the ways that we can actually grow the business and bring different types of debt, different structures in to support that growth is by actually having a larger asset base against which to secure it. At the moment, the strategy on that investment portfolio is to grow it towards £900 million so we can do all of those things. It can basically provide a real solid basis from which to raise funding to grow the business. The other side of it is, it's also highly liquid. It will be Grade A assets. It will be the newest, shiniest things that we can build that sit in that portfolio. Should we feel that we need to go and raise some capital that isn't just about debt or raising equity, we can actually use that portfolio to seed a vehicle and raise funding in that way.
It is a never say never, but it's a very, I would say, future, long time in the future sort of strategy because at the moment we know exactly what we want to do with it as we work through to 2029 and beyond.
How solid is the demand pipeline for residential developers and the plots you're servicing? Are cancellations or slow take-up a risk?
Yeah, that's neat. We've sold 549 units in the first half, and we've got line of sight on 1,600 plots to be sold at the end of the year. Those 1,600 are either completed, conditionally exchanged, or in legals. We've got a pretty good line of sight as we go through the year. The land that we're out there marketing at the moment is seeing a healthy level of bids, similar numbers of parties to what we've seen before. Obviously, we need to get those over the line as we get towards the end of the year. I think everything that we're seeing at the moment gives us confidence around that. We're certainly tracking to meet that 2,000 target. It's very much about execution now.
Yeah, I think it's probably fair to say that from a wider house builder market, it's probably 2025 has probably been a bit of a slower year than we all came into thinking 2025 would be, but that's a macro issue. It's not something that's really driven by the house builders themselves. It's actually more scale.
Our service land product is quite a unique part of what they buy. It very much serves that shorter-term pipeline. They don't have to hold the land for so long. It's lower risk. It definitely feeds in in a different way to the broader land market.
As a product, it's been hugely resilient through the cycle. From COVID right the way through, we've continued to have a really healthy level of demand for that product.
Thank you. As another reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please type them into the Q&A box situated on the right-hand side of your screen. How lumpy should we expect sales to be as property sales volumes fell in H1? How much of the reduction is simply timing with sales expected in H2, and how much is weaker demand?
Half one to half one, the change is very much sort of timing, really. If we look at the residential sales, for example, as touched on, we're on track to meet that 2,000 plot sales target. It's just, it's more sort of half two weighted. We're also anticipating with sales coming in to reduce debt in the second half of the year, some sales of some selected sort of assets out of the investment portfolio.
That's part of our churn and to Grade A and our management of that portfolio. Those are also then in the second half, whereas we had some of those in the first half of last year. That's the comparison year on year. Expecting sort of a very sort of healthy sort of sales pipelines this year. We're working on an awful lot. I guess the one bit that I would flag is obviously last year we had the first phase at Microsoft and also the Amnesty sale, those big one-offs. This year, the sales are more about that usual sort of churn of land and property that we see in the business.
I think from a wider market context, it's probably just worth adding that the deals are out there, but they're just taking longer to get over the line. People are, from an investor or an occupier perspective, there's just a lot more caution about the macro, but so far.
So good.
So far, so good.
Residential sites have seen cost inflation pressures. What mitigation strategies are in place to manage those costs?
As I said, the cost inflation, and we review every six months and then it applies going forwards. We've effectively taken that cost hit already on future costs. We review all of our costs on a really regular basis. We are always looking for opportunities to save costs or for costs to be adding value to the site as well because that can sometimes make sense if that means that we can then achieve a service land sale at a higher level. The key at the moment is probably completing those year-end sales to prove that valuation demand, really prove the liquidity of those sites. We're on pretty good track to do that.
The other thing that I would flag is that the worst inflationary impact on those half-year costs within the residential side probably accounted for about a third of the increase. It wasn't a huge amount. The majority of the increase came from some very specific site increases at Waverley, Colville, and Ironbridge. The Waverley one we touched on with the drainage. Colville and Ironbridge were cost increases that related to actually adding additional units on site. They should deliver value creation as we secure planning and then as we go forward to the service land sales on those sites. I expect that although there was a hit in the first half, it will drive long-term value. It's probably a roundabout way of saying we are always looking at that value creation piece with the cost side.
It's very much the mentality that we take and constantly holding ourselves to account with any cost increases.
How much concentration risk does Harworth have in tying reputation to very large corporate occupiers that could walk away before completion? I would say none. I can't think of when that has been an issue. We talked about from a resi perspective, we retain a charge on the land. Whoever has acquired the land from us and is on, say, a phased payment profile for that land has every incentive to continue to pay us for the land because if they miss a payment, we basically take the land back. From an industrial and logistics perspective, we're either building spec, so we'll go out with some speculative development as we go through the cycle. We're happy at that point that we've pushed the trigger on that to take that risk and to let it up as we go.
When it comes to build to suit, that is all about the structure of the deal opposite the occupier. Often they are funding the development as we go, and there'll be the appropriate mechanics in the contract should they default. If it's a pre-let and something that we're thinking of holding, it's a RSA similar, but largely we will be as contractually tight as we can, both around the relationship that we have with any party that we're delivering service land to, but also, as Kitty Patmore touched on earlier, the supply chain and actually what their contracts are delivering.
One thing we have learned is particularly with the supply chain over the last few years that making sure that you're stepping right down into it and you know who's got what contracts on for others is massively important, but also making sure that you know that your subcontractors are also being paid in a timely manner so that there is nothing that should be falling over underneath the top deal to put us at risk. That means we spend a lot of time making sure we've got the appropriate step-in rights and warranties to take over should something happen.
Yeah.
Is there a risk that you grow too large and are only focused on being a trader and lose your regeneration roots and unique selling point? Very good question. In fact, one that we were asked only a few hours ago, actually. What is our focus? Our focus is basically on running a great company that continues to deliver great returns and value to investors. That doesn't necessarily mean it just needs to keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. In fact, we talked a little bit about the investment portfolio in one of the earlier answers, you could grow that to £900 million.
Actually, if liquidating £300 million of that to go again into something else was the right thing to do, what we would, what we have to do is manage all of these assets, land and the income-producing assets, as if really they were all just one big income portfolio. It's the same mentality. You're basically focused on making sure you can drive the mix, manage any risk, geographical concentration or otherwise, but basically to drive the best returns. Our focus before we did anything would always be on making sure we could actually keep driving those returns and delivering where investors were expecting us to deliver.
Yeah, I think that's right. I think the pathway to sort of a billion is very much about that value creation and the potential that we see after the portfolio rather than just looking to be bigger.
We're now moving on to our final question. If we did not get to your question, please email the Harworth team who will respond to any questions that weren't covered today. What KPIs are used to track progress on regeneration sites, and how often is the progress audited?
Yeah, so we target sort of at a property level delivering an IRR of 15% from all of our sites. The reason that we use that as a metric is that sites tend to be sort of lower value at the beginning and then they create value, become bigger, and we need that sort of constant sort of return over the life of the asset in order to drive the overall portfolio returns. Alongside that, we have sort of milestones on sort of planning, completion of works, lettings, and sales within the course of the year. The way that we work internally is we have sort of models and business plans for every single site that we own, so over 100 sites, and we go through those every six months as a minimum to really interrogate those sites.
They are also, on a selected basis, audited by our internal audit team. They are also presented to the board. If there are any changes, they get above a certain threshold, they get sort of accelerated up to Executive Committee for additional sort of review. We stay quite close to those overall sort of metrics and where things are moving. We need to understand if there are delays, why are the delays, and what's feeding through. If there are cost increases, what's driven that, and how can we manage that? It really is the business sort of living and breathing and holding the teams to account for the work that they do on each of those sites.
Thank you. Linda, I'd now like to hand over for any closing remarks.
Probably just a couple of closing comments. Thank you for joining us, for your questions, and for listening to the presentation this afternoon. I think I'm probably going to conclude in a similar way to what I said in the presentation. We're really pleased that the business is making really strong operational progress from period to period in executing that strategy. The strategy is very clear. We know what we've got to do, and we're heads down focused on delivering that. The investment in the next generation of industrial and logistics sites is really important, and it's going to be really key to driving the growth to £1 billion as we go through the latter years of the plan.
If we look back to four and a half years ago when we put the strategy together, we probably had maybe five sites in our industrial and logistics portfolio that were producing product. We're now heading towards 11, and that is a really big shift, and we've worked really hard to get all of those sites through planning as we've gone through the last four years while we have been driving the velocity through in terms of sales on our residential sites. The business is really well positioned to deliver product at scale and meet demand in the markets that we operate in. We see that as being really important. What we do is important to the regions that we operate in, but actually having sites that can deliver into the market as it will inevitably change and be able to meet demand. We've got new and emerging industries.
Nobody was talking about data three years ago. I'm absolutely sure nobody was talking about defense about 18 months ago. Those are just two of the emerging sectors that we're seeing, with a big focus in our regions on advanced manufacturing, which is another thing that we have a really strong skill set in and a track record of delivery. We feel we're really well positioned to capitalize on those emerging sectors. Our through-the-cycle business model and our specialist skill set has been really robust as we've gone through three pretty tricky years in the markets that we've been in. We've got a track record of really consistent performance and progress towards the targets.
We feel that we've got a line of sight as we enter the last couple of years of the strategic plan on what we need to do and the sites that we need to do that from to get us to that £1 billion.
Thank you.
Thank you to Lynda and Kitty for joining us today. That concludes the Harworth Group PLC Invista presentation. Please take a moment to complete a short survey following this event. The recording of this presentation will be made available on Engage Invista. I hope you enjoyed today's webinar.