Trading Update

Jan 9, 2019

Earnings release

Morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. If as ever, I just go through a quick summary, give Chris a chance to add anything I may have missed, and then we'll open up for I think you should all take a significant amount of comfort from this statement in a time when think we're all uncertain about how trading will perform in the short term that through the back end of 2018, performances continued to be strong. I think to have finished the year with a sales rate ahead of last year and with a record order book, which I will come back to, is a strong performance, but also shows what we've seen sort of out in the field that the market has remained pretty stable. As we said to you, in our last trading update, we wouldn't say to you that there is no uncertainty out there in our customer base. There are definitely marginal customers who have decided and plan to. And many of the things that we've been doing over the last year, plus in terms of making sure that particularly those larger sites, we have the right product on the ground, the right sale techniques, the right sort of price points for people, we think also that fed into that strong sales rate performance I think, yes, I said I'll come back to the order book, probably our strongest focus through the second half of twenty eighteen. We not on 2018 performance. It was on making sure we went into 2019 with the strongest order book possible. As the statement sets out, the majority of the growth is in the scale of the affordable housing order book, which if you remember, last year was reasonably low at this point. But to maintain the strength of the private order book, which is sort of continues to be at an all time high over the last couple of years. And with be trading this far ahead in the kind of conditions that we're seeing, we think is a very good performance. And is the right thing to do in terms of managing the overall balance of risks and returns in business. I think if I move on to land, we have seen a land market whereby it's been less confident in the last 3 months that we've still continue to see deals done, but there have been opportunities to renegotiate on price. And we've continued acquire land, but probably at a slightly lower rate than we would have done without the overall uncertainty and give you just a sense of scale just to give you some sort of indications without that uncertainty, there are probably an additional 6 or 7 sites that we might have bought and an additional 2000 or so plot. Sort of which you're in the process of either renegotiating or deferring. Those opportunities remain there. We're not seeing of competition step up, but at the same time, we think it's the right balance to continue to acquire sites at good margins, but not to overstretch ourselves. It's certainly not time to bet the farm. Just briefly on build costs, the conditions continued to be sort of pretty stable through 2018. Our guidance going into 2019 remains the same level in terms of annual build cost inflation. I think that sense on that is there's probably a bit of upside as in the inflation may actually be a little bit less than that, but it is pretty It depends very much on the particular commodity, the particular sort of level of subcontract resource. We are not seeing any meaningful signs of subcontract labor leaving the workforce. And now it's the time to go into it in detail, but we're definitely seeing some material benefits from our extended apprenticeship programs, which we'll come back to, I'm sure, the pre stage. If I look at sort of 2019 and sort of forward guidance, we go into it, as I say, with a strong order book. We go into it with a record cash position. Those are both very conscious things to do. We can't predict with certainty where the first half trading of 2019 will be. It's very early. Sort of initial signs are actually at the positive end, but it's so early that I wouldn't read too much into those, but making sure that we're in a stronger position as possible and reading sort of how conditions haven't materially changed during the second half 2018 should give us all some confidence. Our broad guidance remains for a flat 2019 in terms of volumes and margins. So nothing really has changed there. And as I look ahead further into 2020, we still have significant potential for volume grace 2020 and beyond. I would say, and I know sort of not touch briefly on outlets, but many of you will look at the outlet number and still sort of see a degree of concern in that. I would refer you back to the beginning of 2018 where there were similar concerns and we assured you that we had the potential to manage sales rates perhaps more effectively than people thought and also as we look back at 2018, now you can see that that was true. But I won't pretend that outlook doesn't make any impact so ever. And it does remain the case that we have to take the right decisions on each individual piece of land investment against the conditions that we see. So have lots of potential growth for 2020 and beyond, but it will, to some extent, depend on trading performance in the first half of this year. To how aggressive we are in seeing through land purchases and making sure that they happen. The sort of most bearish use of market obviously will impact on So that remains a sort of factor that will keep you updated on through the course of the next 6 months. But overall, as I say, our guidance remains for a flat 2019 with potential growth beyond that, sort of in a reasonably meaningful way. Chris, is there anything here that I've missed in that? Just a couple of quick points, I think, from me. Firstly, the continued strength of the group cash generation and balance sheet discipline. Net cash ended $132,000,000 up year on year despite paying more tax, more dividends and spending around 1,000,000 on leasehold and cladding. So I'm pleased with the flexibility that cash generation gives us. Also pleased that our revolving credit facility wasn't drawn on at all during 2018. I can probably say this is we're in different locations, but I think modesty probably prevents paper from commenting on Glassdoor. So I will. We have one of, if not the lowest rate of staff turnover in the industry because we invest in the training and the development of our employees. And very importantly, we have a culture that our teams are really proud to be part of. So we bought at 9 best place to work in the UK by employees as a great achievement for the company. And as you can imagine, that brings lots of value in attracting and retaining the best people, but it can also give you an insight into how different we are from our competitors. And then lastly, a more general point that in February, when we report the 2018 results in full, I expect to be showing you improvement over 2017 in pretty much all of our key financial metrics And I emphasize that just because I think it's really easy to get distracted away from the strength of our performance in 2018 with everything that's going on at the moment. Yes. Thank you, Chris. Can we open up for questions there, Karl? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. And right now, sir, we have 3 participants And your first question comes from the line of Anthony Landon. Your line is now open. Great. Hi, good morning. Happy New Year to everybody. And just two questions actually. I know you don't like to give much guidance on kind of site numbers, but obviously last year the average sites were down 5% and the current spot number I think it gives down around 9%. Just wondered if you say a bit more. I mean, do you expect to be opening more science as we enter this year and with the kind of site number be down by less than the 5% they were down in 2018? I mean, secondly, obviously, you talked about the customer kind of caution seen in London Southeast. Wondering if you could comment on markets in the midlands and further north, presumably they're still strong. I'm not showing any of that kind of caution. And I think your cancellation rate was at 14% for the year. Do you see any increase in that as we got towards the end of 2018? Thanks, Azey. I think there were 3 questions, not 2. On outlook numbers, I think we do expect to open more outlets during 2019. All things being equal, we expect outlet numbers to increase during the year, but not by massive quantities. I'm not going to give you specific guidance. I think the outlets that we need completions on in 2019 are highly secure. So they're either already open or we have planning and we're literally in the final stages. Our sort of outlet opening risk in terms of impact on 2019 completions is very low. As I touched on, the balances are conditions strong enough for us to see through every land purchase in our plans and bring things through at the same pace as to how many outlets we exit the year and then 2020. That's a bigger swing, which we'll keep you updated on. I'm not trying to give you a signal that that has changed, but I don't want to be in a position where it can are weaker in the next 6 months. We're chasing a number and sort of trying to do the wrong thing. What that would do would be to defer the growth sort of into later 2020, but that's the swing factor more than 2019 volumes. Does that make sense? I think if you look at sort of the Southeast market versus Midlands in the north, I think when we touched on this before, I think people oversimplify and almost everybody has sort of accepted that London and the Southeast is is weaker. And they've been very nervous about talking anything other than everywhere else is strong. I think that exaggerates both positions. It is true that the higher price points, which are weighted towards London and the Southeast are generally weaker and the balance of the market is generally stronger. But I actually don't think there's a bigger difference as people, sorts of, would imply. So we haven't suddenly seen our weakening in the midlands of the north, but I think through the last 12 months. They've not quite been quite as strong as they were 12 months ago. And if I look at London and the Southeast broadly, we still generally have higher sales rates in many of those markets. Than we do in the Midlands and the North. So sort of I'm not changing the position, but I do think there's just a slight mismatch sometimes that sort of people like a simple story, the reality is sort of actually it's not quite as black and white in that. In terms of cancellation rates, no, we haven't seen any meaningful change. Obviously, the points where you tend to see cancellation rates spike if they are going to is right at the period of peak completions before half years 4 years and we didn't see that at all in December. There was no kind of pattern of sort of increased cancellations nor was there anything like down valuation issues or any of those normal signals? And I, yes, sort of looking at in front of me that sheet of four graphs that sometimes use in presentations just to give you a broader sense of market resilience. And if you looked at that with the trends of things like online sort of appointment bookings and brochure requests and those sorts of things that we look at as forward indicators. You would not if you looked at it, you would not see any trend that you thought or wonder what's going on there. Statistically, everything looks pretty, pretty normal. Okay. Your next question comes from the line of John Bell. Your line is now open. Mr. Jenbo, your line is now open. You can now ask a question. I think Carl, maybe if you move on to the next question and come back to John, do you have a specific moment technical issue? Sure, sir. Okay. Your next question comes from the line of Chris Millington. Your line is now open, sir. Morning gents. Happy New Year. Hi, Chris. Hi. Just a couple for me. I just wonder if you could comment on kind of pricing trends through 'eighteen and kind of how you saw that exit and whether or not you could kind of feel there's enough in the system to kind of offset the bill inflation you're seeing. So that's the first one. 2nd one is just about your commentary Pete around some renegotiation opportunities on land. I don't know. Is this kind of mirroring what you saw post the EU referendum back in June 2016 or is it a slightly more moderate profile? And the final one is just about this comment around significant growth in 2020. I'm just wondering if kind of flesh that out a little bit more. I think everyone interprets the word significantly differently. So I'd just welcome your sort of thought on what you're implying by that. Yes. Okay. So first, if I deal with the, renegotiation on land question first and then the pricing and then the growth Yes, I'm no. I think we've got a longer period now where I think land owners and particularly land promoters sort of bringing forward schemes have had a building up of uncertainty the same uncertainty that you see in the share price, the same uncertainty that we all feel about not quite sure where the world is going. It seems okay at the moment, but quite sure when the next few months will take us. And so because of that, you've got a nervous set of land owners who want to close deals. And you've got sort of slightly more sellers than buyers. And we said although the land market has been good over the last sort of 4, 5 years in a historic context, it's been balanced. And I think that shift has gone sort of further sort of in our favor in that over the last few months. That's slightly different to the immediate post referendum period simply because that kind of uncertainty takes time to build up. At the end of the day, we when you get a certain amount of uncertainty and deal suddenly hold post the referendum, actually you get 1 or 2 marginal sellers who really panic or who need the cash then. Now you've got a more general trend of uncertainty. So maybe the movements are smaller, but it's more general across all land deals. Sort of so, I don't think you can really see that in the overall land price statistics. I think what we see at the moment, you probably will are too. It may change quite quickly in the New Year. But it's definitely through the last 2 to 3 months. That has been a shift in the level of confidence in the land market and that we have seen from our perspective as a a positive, but we've got to choose how to use it. Is it to do some deals and not others to push on price and it's a mix of all of the above? I think in terms of fleshing out the growth, I'm going to Doug that question for now and comment back to you in February. I'm happy to talk about it, but I think it's better talked about in a couple of months time with a couple of months of extra certainty and also when we got a bit more time because it's about choices. And I don't it's not about we have the capacity, which we haven't really have for the last couple of years. But as I said before, it will depend on seeing through land investments and the scale of the work in progress investments we make. And I think sort of the scale potential is significant, sort of, however, you define it. It's the timing that's the choice. And so that's more of a strategic question, so better I think, face to face in a presentation. And then on pricing, I think it's fair to say that the balance there is risk in there. I think there will be some cost inflation and we don't know what price inflation we'll see. I think if you look at the last 6 months, we've still seen netnet, a small positive price trend. You know, is it compared to, you know, sort of say, April last year, 1.5%, something like that. It's that sort of order. That's that about offsets the cost movements, but it's close. There's not a lot of buffer there. So it's main reason we've guide you to flat. We've got push our own costs hard and make some savings. And as we talked about in our strategy presentation back in April, May, we have some things in our own gift. So that all goes into the mix. So we still think that guidance is a good one, but yeah, the market's not going to do us any favors in that. So we've got to work hard to make sure that happens. That's great. Your next question comes from the line of Andy Murphy. Your line is now open. Good morning, Pete. Good morning, Chris. Happy New Year to do both. I'm quite a few more questions have been answered, but I've still got a handful left. Just on the social content up from 19% to 23%. Can you just talk a little bit about the trends behind that? What what's the driver and whether that's going to be representative at the 23% level or different in sort of 2019 2020? On the forward sales being up, I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how that's been achieved and to what extent you've maybe been deferring or holding back sales because obviously, if that number is very good, but your sign numbers are down, it sort of perhaps suggests that something else is going on. And then finally, on the quality side of things, you said previously that you'd been striving to improve basically sort of customer experience to sort of build quality. Just wondering what's your components here to say what you've done and what the evidences of achieving those kind of milestones in terms of quality? Chris, are you happy to take the social proportion and the forward sales, and I'll take the quality 1. Yes. Shall I go first? Sure. Okay. So In terms of the proportion of social tips, yes, you said 19% last year to 23 this, I think over the last 10 or so years, we've seen that the contribution of affordable homes, in the northern regions has increased quite a bit. I think as councils have got more sophisticated and viabilities and there's been a greater desire for affordable homes in more widely across the UK. So I think the 2019 was probably a low I think whilst the 23% is reasonably high, it's probably not the extreme, but I wouldn't be I think you were asking for guidance going forward. I would, I would be staying closer to the 23 from the 2019. In terms of the forward sales, and I think you asked whether something else was going on, not at all, the order book we're obviously pleased with 16% up in volume, nearly 10% up in value. Those increases, driven by affordable homes. And we see that across all 3 of the divisions, in the affordable order book, but mostly in London and the Southeast. And that increase in affordable also obviously explains the 6% reduction in the blended ASP in that order book. Thanks, Chris. And going back to the quality question, Andy. I think there are 2 main types of measures that we are tracking. One is the sort of pure customer feedback. And that measures well one kind of quality, which is sort of final finish, the handover, you tend to covers number of snagging issues and the like. And yes, we could both make overall numbers. And then specifics like the number of snagging issues is a specific feedback number. But also increasingly, we're able to track specific quality measures. So for instance, the NHBC started about 3 years ago, construction quality audits, which are aimed to help businesses improve and test and work out where as you sit. We've seen material improvement during 2018 on all of those measures. So if you take the latter, the construction quality reviews, our performance went from Midtabled to top 3, during the course of 2018 across the sort of 28 largest sort of builders in the sector. And if you look at our customer satisfaction scores, our year to date scores have gone up to about 90 point 3 sort of from 88 point something sort of a year earlier. So on both of those measures, which measure slightly different facets of quality, both of which matter you can see both real and relative improvements over the course of the last 12 months. And as we look forward, those will be I think increasingly important measures, not just for us, but for the sector, both for customers and for sort of the potential for our quality ombudsman. Great. Okay. Thank you very much. And your next question comes from the line of Will Jones Your line is now open. Thanks. Morning guys. I've got 3 if I could please as well. The first is whether it's just possible to give us the the private volumes in the order book at year end please, separate from the social and how it's possible that compared to at the same point last year? And then I guess when you think about that number, is there a particular floor you have in mind as to what you'd ideally want, I guess, as a minimum when you go forward into any given financial year, I guess, thinking 12 months ahead? The second I think I'm right in saying there was a bulk deal in your sales towards the end of the year, perhaps you just on that. And again, as we look to 'nineteen, what's your, I guess, propensity to do bulk deals and how available are those? I guess, in the marketplace generally. And then the last one was just touching base on mix for the SSP. I think in November you talked about a couple of on mix in 'nineteen. For a memory, you'd always talked about this year as being one where Central London dropped as a percentage of revenue, just given timings, is that still the case? And if so, what's helping get that mix back up as a positive? Thanks. So can you I got the last question where it was about mix, but I was still noting down the previous Yeah, it was just, yeah, it was just, I think you talked about it being a couple of percent positive on mix for the ASP in 'nineteen, but thinking about previous comments that you'd always highlighted 2019 as being a year when Central London drops as a percentage of revenue given timing if that's still the case, what is it that's allowing the mix to be a positive in the current year? Yes. Okay. I think a floor on the private order book number, not in absolute terms. The way we tend to think about it is, at a business unit and site level, a proportion of the following year's completions, And I personally tend to think about it more, how far ahead we're selling on each individual site. So, yes, we've touched on this before. So if our size of selling sort of less than 3 months ahead, I think it starts to impact on price and confidence It's not the end of the world, sort of, but it's not ideal. If they're selling more than 6 months ahead, then it tends to impact on service and accuracy of forecasting of delivery timetables. So, you know, the sweet spot is probably somewhere around 4.5to5.5 months and we're comfortably in that range at the moment on the majority of sites. So it's that balance. And we look at then at sort of individual sales rate side by side as well. So it's not whilst inevitably from an external macro point of view look at an order book number, I think that timing of when we're selling, we've got decent amount of release on each side. But are we actually sort of not selling from sort of finished stock or post stock, improved confidence for customers and for our own sales. Yes. You're right. There was a book deal. I mean, that relatively unusual for us. I think the decision for us is very much about it is a period of uncertainty. We've kind of been very clear that making sure that the order book was strong as possible at the end of 2018 is a key point. We were particularly trying to fill a gap. It wasn't sort of big enough for that, but the pricing felt right, the timing felt right. So sort of it was felt like the right thing to do. There are things out there. It's relatively rare. I think that they come together and you think that's the right price and it's the right balance. So though there is lots of interest, it's not something that we particularly feel the need to chase impact on the year sort of relatively small, which is why we have Mr. We've talked about it, but haven't particularly quoted it. So sales rates, for instance, would still be a head year on year and those sorts of things. It doesn't distort any of those underlying sort of messages. I don't expect us particularly to be doing something similar in the next 3 months, but will something similar happen in 2019, maybe? Institutional backed money, but through a registered provider, it's a fairly normal deal sort of, I think across the but just felt like a good timing to tap that extra expense in the order book. It's a really hard question to answer because it's the it's movement of lots of small things. It's your You're right. We expect 2019 to be very low on Central London completions. And we see the completions going back in from Central London in 2020 and 2021. But the reason over 2018 2019, all positive mix variance, right, that is just quality of locations. It's more that than really big reach shifts, where I don't think we see a meaningful shift from sort of north to south. It's for just the quality of locations at an individual regional level. It's not particularly bigger product, either our average sort of refer to be pretty stable, but it's just generally you've seen, and you've seen this last has been able to set the location at a reasonable level. Great. Thank you. And just one follow-up on the order, but would you be willing to give the private unit in the in the order book at the moment? I'm sorry, yes. I don't have the exact number. The private number is very flat, which is why the reference in the statement to yeah, the growth comes from affordable housing. Do you have the absolute number to hand, Chris? I don't add on machine in front of me. Yes, 3852 will Great. Thanks a lot. And your next question comes from the line of Gregor Kugstitch. Your line is now open. Taking my questions. There's only a couple left. So the first one is on margins. Not sure I may have misheard you Pete, but you were kind of saying flat volumes and you also threw in margins in that sense in your initial comments. I want to understand if that is indeed what you were trying to say because obviously, I believe in November, you were kind of talking before some modest compression. I think the number that you flagged was something like 50 basis points as we think about 2019. So wanna understand if anything has changed in that position as fast today, you have some visibility in your order book, what the margin is rather the 2018 outturn. So if you could give us some color that would be helpful? And then secondly, scraps is not a question necessarily for trading update call, but I'll ask it, regardless. Obviously, you're committing your GBP 600,000,000 dividend payment. I think that works out as something like 12%, thirteen percent yield. Are you thinking about perhaps giving yourself flexibility to deploy that capital either partly or in whole to share buybacks rather than dividends? Or is that not something you think makes any sense for you? Thanks. Just on margins, I did, I was referring to flat margins, but I don't see that as being fundamentally different from what you said in November about potential for sort of 50 basis points compression. It's very small numbers and difference at the beginning of the year. So yes, and as I touched on in terms of the balance between price and cost, sort of it feels hard to see an enormous amount of upside in the balance on price and cost this year. Not seeing a huge amount of downside either, but the balance is probably on the 50 basis points downside. So no real change from November. But pretty flat overall. In terms of share buyback, I mean, I think, you probably know, if you don't, it's certainly no secret we agreed to all of our shareholders that we, got a shareholder approval to further to increase our potential to do share buybacks. That doesn't mean that we're suddenly about to use that. That was over the Christmas period. We had an extraordinary general meeting just to give ourselves that flexibility. Doesn't mean we expect to use it. In fact, in the very short term before the results we couldn't use it through in a closed period. But I think when you look at how we're seeing trading, the strength of the cash position, the potential for sort of dividends and growth into 2020 2021 and where the share price is, it will be irresponsible of us not to at least be considering it. And I don't want you to take that as a strong indication that we would definitely do it, but we wanted to make sure depending on how things go, both in terms of the share price and trading over the course of the next 3 to 4 months that we have the potential to do share buybacks if it felt right. So we're certainly open minded about it, but please don't take as a signal that you should expect something in the immediate future. And I'm sure we'll come back to the prelims. Thanks. But just to be clear, if you were to do, I understand you have the authority to do buyback, but would you basically take that funding out of dividends or on top or is it kind of all open? It's very open, Greg, because it depends on the circumstance. I think we're very aware that for certain investors, sort of favored buyback, certain investors very wedded to, dividend structure, where not naive about the impact of doing it in various different ways. But it just depends massively on the circumstances. Where the share price sits, where we see trading, where the balance sheet sits, sort of so I'm not going to pin it down any more than that. We're open minded about the various different options, but it will be wrong given the sort of volatility in the share price and the underlying strength of trading for us at least not to be thinking about it at this point. Okay. And your next question comes from the line of Glains Johnson. Your line is now open. Good morning, everybody. It's just a quick one, just unfortunately covering the Brexit topic. I'm just wondering if there's anything in terms of how you are running your business, managing your your whip on sites, your product, your materials on sites, are you changing how you're running the business given the uncertainty on Brexit and what will happen around the March time? Yes, I think we've touched on the main, areas, Dennis. It's undoubtedly affected sort of, the sort of marginal land purchases in November of December. It's affected sort of drive for a strong order book at the end of the year. It's affected our desire to just protect cash that a little bit more and give ourselves just that bit more flexibility. I would say it's not in a material way affected, sort of where we are with work in progress. We feel work in progress is reasonably control in our businesses. We're well covered by the scale of the forward order book. But sort of across the whole of the business, across cost base across how we're investing in new skills. It's there in the background just perhaps tweaking tweaking those individual decisions, but apart from those areas of where the order book sits, and land purchases, I wouldn't say the impact is particularly material, but it's there. We take it into account. And your next question comes from the line of Ridish Sia. Your line is now open. Hi. I have 2, one second, of one third. The first one is on incentive level. So are you kind of seeing any kind of spike in the incentive level probably end of the year or early here, have you seen kind of any spike happening there? I mean, customers are asking for more goodies or putting extra into homes. The second one is on the land. I see your comment about, you are kind of, some timing issues led to, I mean, additional cash generation for this year. But is it also a conscious decision from yours side to, to see that the land market cracks a bit more and you wait and see a right opportunity to go to the market and buy it? Or is it also driven by your, target of cutting down the land bank close to 1 year? On incentive levels, no, we haven't seen any change. I mean, as you will all know, we always talk about pricing, net of incentives anyway. So you would see that in all of our other comments. But no, yes, I mean, I don't think I need to sort of explain that in the prime central London market, there are more incentives than there were 3 years ago, but not particularly more incentives than there were 6 months ago. But if you look across the business as a whole, there's no change in the level of incentive levels If you look on land, absolutely, it's a conscious decision. When I say it's a timing issue, it's a conscious decision for the to be a change in timing as in we might have delayed the purchase sort of, but still keep that option open. Yes, yes, I think there is, yes, certainly in terms of how we explain our views on land to our own teams internally. There's an element of look, at the end of the day, it's in our interest for the land market not to become overheated. I wouldn't say that, that would be as, considered as the view that we could change that sort of overall, but there's a responsibility to make sure that you don't sort of that you do reflect risk in how you buy land. And obviously, for the bigger players, that tends to have a broader impact on the market overall over time. So but it is a conscious view. Is the phenomena I'm talking about related to our longer term sort plan that our land bank will shorten as volumes grow, less so because the 2000 or so plots I was talking about was relative to our plans perhaps 6 or 9 months earlier for 2018. So those plans already reflected sort of that view of a shorter longer term shorter land bank over time. So it's more about the shorter term market uncertainty and the opportunities in the land bank than it is about that longer term strategy. Okay, sir. And your last question comes from the line of Mr. John Bow. Your line is now open. Good morning all. Apologies I got cut off earlier. I've got 3 questions for you actually. Firstly, could you just comment on the land creditor? Position at the year end? And second, I know you've touched on some of those forward or lead indicators, but I just wonder whether you could just comment on things like web hits and site visitor numbers will be at this early stage. And then thirdly, you've got 1 notable Central London scheme down at the bottom of Exmouth market there. I just wonder whether you could comment on sales rates and progress there. Thank you. Yes. So do you want to pick up the land creditor last, Chris? And if I touch on the sort of forward indicators in Central London? Yes, yes, no problem. So in terms of forward indicators, as I said before, there is nothing in website hits or brochure requests that would concern you. They're very consistent with the last 2 to 3 years sort of and work through the December period. So there's no individual trends that you would look at and sort of either worry about or think, oh, wow, that's massively better than I thought very much in line. I think in terms of sort of our newer central logging schemes, I'm not going to go individual sales rates, but sales performance on both pricing and rates has been, where we expected on pricing and ahead of where we expected on rate. Yeah, which to be honest, I know this sounds a little bit sort of wrong, but to be honest, it's what we'd expect, we'd expect this kind of environment because it would have been relatively cautious on both. And sort of so for us to be a head on rate is what we would want to see rather than being a massive shock. And Chris, do you want to pick up a land creditor? Yes. Well, actually, I think John's referring to Mount Pleasant, isn't he? And I actually popped down there last week. I think since we launched in September, we've had something like 45 sales. So that is a scheme that's looking good on both build and sales front. But on land creditors, they've increased by about 1,000,000 since the half year. But the increase in net cash obviously means that adjusted gearing has actually reduced. I think buying larger sites of the increase of the opportunities for deferral on attractive terms. And the numbers tend to reflect that. Yes. Yes, sir. We have one question, last, it's from Andy Murphy. Your line is now open. Yeah, sorry, just to catch you before you leave, just on that Brexit issue, can you give us a flavor for the goods and products that you're importing and to what extent your thinking or actively stockpiling any important bits I'm thinking about maybe boilers in particular might be an issue. Just wondering how you're thinking about that, what's activity you're actually action you're taking? Yes, I think as you all know, for us, and I think for the vast majority of our sector, our level of direct imports is very low. There's very little that we ourselves import. It's more a component issue in the supply chain to make sure that our supplier base is thinking and planning ahead. So on things like bricks where we've had a degree of imports over the sort of growth in the market, that level of has already dropped off pre Brexit kind of discussions anyway. So it's more about procurement teams being close to our customer base and make sure that we can see any sort of potential bottlenecks for them. We also have as you all know, which is unusual in the sector, an internal business called Tadalupe Logistics, which does give us the capacity to actually stockpile things at a national level if we feel the need. At the moment, the number of areas we think that necessarily is very small, but it's obviously we're watching pretty closely. But for us as a business, the direct impact is both relatively small, but also, it's slower to impact because it's further down the supply chain. Okay. That concludes our Q and A session for today. I will now hand over back to Peter Redfern for his closing remarks. Thank you, Karl. Thanks everybody for the questions and thank you for the sort of the number and depth of the questions. Yes, I think, yes, sort of hopefully our position is fairly clear, we're pleased with 2018, but pleased with the way that we go into 2019. But we're not naive about the level of risk and we're not pretending to you that there isn't any risk. Our job is to make sure that If it's, it's the best end of potential market performances, we can take advantage of that, particularly into 2020 and beyond. And it is a bit tougher. The business is in a stronger position as possibly can be. And I think you can see from the stats in our comments that we're on top of both of those. So thank you very much and look forward to catching up properly in a couple of months.