Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Persimmon Q3 Trading Update Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press *11 on your telephone. You'll then hear an automated message advising your handle phrase. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to your host today. It's Dean Finch, CEO. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. I'm joining you today from our Newcastle office, where, alongside colleagues, I'll later be attending the funeral of our founder, Duncan Davidson. Of course, our thoughts are with Duncan's family and friends, but it is also a sad and poignant day for us at Persimmon, as we remember a man who taught us a lot about business and life. First and foremost, Duncan inspired many, many people. What quickly struck me at Persimmon was the genuine warmth Duncan's held in by those who knew him and worked with him. I often hear, "A great man and a great boss." Duncan was a visionary and an entrepreneur. I have the great honor to lead this company, inheriting Duncan's great legacy while trying to build on his great insights and strong foundations.
Fundamentally, Duncan knew that a great value home, built by great people, trusted to deliver excellence consistently, would deliver for customers and for shareholders alike. I, we, try to maintain these values, his drive and vision in all we do, as I hope today's results demonstrate. We're pleased with today's results, as they show we've performed well in a challenging market. Across the key metrics, we can see the benefit of our investment in the business and our self-help initiatives. We've maintained a good sales rate, despite a clear softening for the industry over the summer and in the run-up to the budget. Customer sentiment is more fragile, so I'm delighted we've also so far maintained a sales rate ahead of last year. Initiatives such as New Build Boost, our shared equity product, have helped, alongside the broader investment in sales and marketing. Forward sales are up.
Both our total forward sales and the private forward sales element are up, both around 15%. Pricing is robust, and we remain disciplined on incentive use, running around 4%-5%. Our build position is good. We're clearly focused on securing the year-end completions, and we remain on track to deliver our guidance. Our proactive approach has helped drive further planning success. This is reflected in our growing outlet base. We continue to invest in the business to drive growth and returns. We're being presented with good land opportunities, and are maintaining our discipline while growing our overall land holdings. As we look ahead, the budget is clearly a crucial moment. How any measures impact customer sentiment, including amongst institutional investors, will be crucial. Nonetheless, we're on track to deliver this year's guidance and are determined to continue to drive further growth to meet our medium-term growth ambitions.
Thank you very much, and I'll now open it up to any questions you might have.
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question on the phone, please press *11 and wait for a name to be announced. If you'd like to cancel your request, you can also press *11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Aynsley Lammin from Investec. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Thanks. Two questions from me, please. Just wondered if you could give maybe a bit more coverage on pricing and incentives, how they've kind of evolved through the autumn selling season. ASP privates up 1.5%. Is that mixed? Is there any HPI in there? Have you ticked up incentives more recently? Second question, just on, obviously, did a good job increasing site numbers. Just as you look into next year, what's the visibility like for kind of site openings, your expectation of planning for next year? Thanks.
Morning, Aynsley. As we said, pricing has been good so far over the course of the year. I mean, we did see a softening—let me rephrase that. We saw a very strong, actually, July and August, but then that tailed off towards the end of August as speculation mounted as to what's in or not in the budget. Although what I would say is, actually, over the course of the last couple of three weeks, we've seen sentiment improve again as numbers seem to be rebounding. So we did see a softening. Tailor too hard. It's very strong first part of the summer, softening in the middle, coming back a bit now. Pricing is robust. Good PD performance. The area I suppose we've seen a bit of softening is in terms of institutional demand as well, but overall, pleased with performance.
It's still up, but a bit of softening, but overall, pleased with performance and incentives have held in the 4-5% range. We've maintained our discipline there. In terms of site numbers, you're right. We've had excellent progress with opening outlets this year. We expect to do a similar number next year, looking to open around 100 outlets, subject to planning, and looking to drive forward again next year by around 10-15 in terms of net. Obviously, that is subject to planning and subject to getting all the various other parties, such as Highways, Natural England, and all the other good people across the line.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. The next question comes from the line of Allison Sun from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, morning, Dean. Just one question from my side is, it's probably more a question for Andrew, is the sales price in the order book, I see it's up by around 1.5% year- over- year. Can I ask if it's mostly driven by a mixed impact or it's more like an underlying increase? Thank you.
Andrew, do you want to pick that up?
Yeah, I'll pick that, morning, Allison. Yeah, as ever, Alison, there is the whole mixed effect in terms of geographies and sites and size of products and so on. I think fundamentally, the point comes back to the point Dean made a moment ago around pricing has been robust. I think particularly the further north that you move, the more robust pricing has been. I think there will always be a mixed effect in there, but it's not that it's a question of the mix is driving up and how pricing is coming off. I think pricing has been robust on a like-for-like basis as well. I think we're pleased with the pricing we've achieved, actually, across all of our regions. It's a combination, but pricing has been robust, and that is shown through in the forward order book.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for the questions. Please hold for the next question. The next questions we have live from Ami Galla from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Two questions for me. The first one was on the investments that you've talked about in the release. One was on, in the recent news flow, you had announced that you've acquired a planning promotion company. Can you talk a bit more about the land market and how do you see that as an opportunity ahead? The second one is on the new Rezide product. Can you talk about how the initial interest has been and what's the take-up of that product in the market?
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I mean, the land market is certainly very busy for us at the moment. I'm in a happy position of—we are in a happy position of having choice. We have a lot of opportunities available to us, so that is enabling us to be choosy. The immediate land bank is in great shape. Strat land is also in a good position, and we have looked to strengthen that in places with, for instance, this acquisition of Lone Star. It is a small company, but it fits where we have got some gaps, so we are very pleased with that. Yeah, look, overall, the land market is very healthy for us at the moment, and we are feeling good about the future. Rezide only launched last week. I think we have taken one sale so far.
I think the key point about this with New Build Boost and other products that we either have or we're developing is it gives our customers a range of choice. Clearly, affordability is the main issue still facing the market. Anything you can do to help with that helps boost our numbers. As I said, we've now got Rezide as well as New Build Boost, so it enables us to give customers more options. The key thing, actually, really is not so much the numbers we sell through these things, but the opportunities they bring us. We often find that the headline attracts people into the door, but then they may not end up taking that product for whatever reason. It is extremely helpful to have these tools in the toolbox.
Thank you for the questions. Now, next questions come from the line of Will Jones from Rothschild & Co Redburn. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Morning. Three, if I can, please. First, maybe just covering off on second half completions. I do not know if you would be willing to give us a view on how Q3 looked compared to the roughly 1,400 I think you had last year that you gave back then, and just what risks or otherwise you see to delivering to year-end, just noting the 83% exchanged or complete compared to 85% last year. Are you reasonably comfortable around the Q4 delivery? Second, build costs. I think this time last year, you talked about some rising costs looking into this year and a couple of issues on sites with some regulatory costs. I think you would give us on the equivalent this time around as we look to 2026.
Apologies if it was covered right at the start of your intro because I did miss it, but the comments you gave back in the summer around 2026, volume and margin aspirations, do they still apply in equal measure? Thank you.
Thank you. Andrew, do you want to pick those up, please?
Yeah, I'll take those. Dean, morning, Will. In terms of the second half delivery, I mean, we're ahead in terms of absolute numbers on exchanges and completions year on year, as you'd expect. I think the 83% versus 85% is in the sort of margin and the round, isn't it? Pleased with where we are and continuing to progress well for the year-end, which is why we're able to reconfirm in line with market guidance. Pleased with that. In terms of build cost and inflation, we said coming into the year, we expected low single-digit inflation, so 2%-3%. I think that's around about what we have seen. Obviously, we'll talk more in January and as we go forward and coming off the back of the budget.
Of course, this time last year, we'd just come out of a budget which had increased national insurance and so on. That was one of the things we were talking about this time last year. Our statement was just after the budget rather than just before. I think all of the things being equal, I'd expect to continue to see that level of some inflation, but certainly not where we were a couple of years ago. This year, we have seen that 2%-3%, as we said, that we would do. Just casting forward, obviously, we talked and gave some early guidance for 2026 in the summer. Obviously, that was all predicated on relatively stable market conditions. I think we haven't explicitly given any updates to that today.
I think I'm reasonably comfortable with where the consensus is for volume for next year. I'll sit back in line with the guidance we gave on both volume and the trajectory or the speed of margin growth that we talked to in the summer. The one thing which I have put into the statement today, I do think interest costs next year will be just a tad higher than this year. Probably we guided this year to kind of up to $20 million. Next year might be closer to $25 million as we continue to invest in the business. I'm talking about land investment. I'm talking about the investment into work in progress to open new outlets. I'm talking about investment into vertical integration and working through the fire safety remediation work and so on.
That's really the only sort of tap on the tiller, if you like, that I've just called out in today's statement. Otherwise, I think the guidance that we talked to in the summer is still there in terms of volume and speed of margin progression.
Thank you.
Thank you for the question. As a reminder to ask questions, you can press star 11 and wait for a name to be announced. Our next questions come from the line of [Zem Piktawa] from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First of all, my thoughts go out to Duncan's family. I hope today goes well.
Thank you.
Yeah, on the questions, the first would be just on Charles Church. You mentioned performing well. I was wondering if maybe you could provide some details or figure on this. Secondly, Dean, I think you mentioned some softening in institutional demand. Is this just the nature of uncertainty around the budget or anything else going on there? Thank you very much.
Shall I take the second one first, Andrew, and then ask you to talk about Charles Church? Yeah, look, I mean, it is. We have seen one or two of our PRS customers take the decision to pause investments until they know what is in the budget. I mean, I think it is entirely understandable. They are taking a wait-and-see approach. I do not think it is lost business, but I think it is perhaps deferred business, and we just need to wait and see, like everybody else, what comes out of the budget. Not big numbers yet, but I just put it out there for you to be aware of.
Yeah. Thanks, Dean. Morning, Zane. Just on Charles Church. We obviously relaunched Charles Church earlier this year in the spring, and we're pleased with how that's progressing. We've opened seven new Charles Church sites in the period. We're looking, as we've said before, to double the volume from Charles Church. It was around about 1,000 units in 2024, and we're looking to double that over the next few years. I think we're making good progress. I think there's a couple of things I would call out, particularly. One is having that extra product at a different price. It gives us an opportunity to sell more product to different customers, a different customer base. That's helpful. It gives another string to our bow, which is particularly helpful. It allows us to drive increased outlets. We're seeing that is of value.
Clearly, it's not for every site everywhere, and some of our sites will just be Persimmon, some will just be Charles Church, and some locations we can use Persimmon and Charles Church. I think the extra brand and the extra outlets is giving us opportunity to play tunes in a market where actually having alternatives and different approaches is very helpful. We will give more detail on the actual numbers in terms of completions and so on, obviously, in the new year, but I'm pleased that we've been able to open more outlets and start to drive that growth in Charles Church that we talked about in the spring.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you for the questions. If you appear to have no further questions at this time, I'd like to hand the call back to management for closing.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you all for listening in this morning. I believe we're in, I think we're in a robust position as we enter the last few weeks of the year. I'll just repeat really what I said in the summer, which is Persimmon is building a differentiated base for itself through its investment in its land, in its brand, in its products, in its factories, and its people. That's enabling us to build on our core strengths, as I see it, which is what to build, where to build, and how to build. That does give us an edge, I believe. Our products are more affordable on average than our peers. We're working hard to support those with a range of accessible ownership routes and products.
We continue to invest in land and target our approach to planning, which is clearly driving growth, and production is accelerating as we drive more from our factories, both through what we're using and through timber frame. Thank you very much for listening in, and have a good day all.
Thank you for today's conference call. Thank you for your participating. You may now disconnect your line.