Well, good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. As ever, I just go through a quick summary, give Chris a chance to add in anything I may have missed, and then we'll open up for questions. I think you should all take a significant amount of comfort from this statement in a time when I think we're all uncertain about how trading will perform in the short term, that through the back end of 2018, performance has 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 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, "I'll leave it for a bit," but actually there are still plenty of customers to continue to trade at the level that we have expected and planned to. 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 sales techniques, the right price points for people, we think also have fed into that strong sales rate performance. I think, I said I'd come back to the order book. Probably our strongest focus through the second half of 2018 was 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. To maintain the strength of the private order book, which continues to be at an all-time high over the last couple of years, and them to be trading this far ahead in the kind of conditions that we're seeing we think is a very good performance. Is the right thing to do in terms of managing the overall balance of risks and returns in the business.
I think if I move on to land, we have seen a land market where buyers have been less confident in the last three months, that we still continue to see deals done, but there have been opportunities to renegotiate on price, and we've continued to acquire land, but probably at a slightly lower rate than we would have done without the overall uncertainty. To give you just a sense of scale, just to give you some indications, without that uncertainty, there are probably an additional six or seven sites that we might have bought and an additional 2,000 or so plots, which we were in the process of either renegotiating or deferring. Those opportunities remain there. We're not seeing 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 have continued to be pretty stable through 2018. Our guidance going into 2019 remains the same sort of level in terms of annual build cost inflation. I think our 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 patchy. It depends very much on the particular commodity, the particular level of subcontract resource. We are not seeing any meaningful signs of subcontract labor leaving the workforce. Now's not 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, at the prelim stage.
If I look at 2019 and forward guidance, we go into it, as I say, with a very 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. Initial signs are actually at the positive end, but it's so early that I wouldn't read too much into those. Making sure that we're in as strong a position as possible and reading how conditions haven't materially changed during the second half of 2018 should give us all some confidence. Our broad guidance remains for a flat 2019 in terms of volumes and margins. Nothing really has changed there. As I look ahead further into 2020, we still have significant potential for volume growth 2020 and beyond.
I would say, and I know I'll touch briefly on outlets, that many of you will look at the outlet number and still 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. Obviously, as we look back at 2018, now you can see that that was true. I won't pretend that outlets don't make any impact whatsoever. 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.
We 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 as to how aggressive we are in seeing through land purchases and making sure that they happen. The most bearish views of the market obviously will impact on that. That remains a fact that we'll keep you updated on through the course of the next six months. Overall, as I say, our guidance remains for a flat 2019 with potential growth beyond that 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's cash generation and balance sheet discipline. Net cash ended GBP 132 million up year-on-year despite paying more tax, more dividends, and spending around GBP 30 million on leasehold and cladding. 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 as we're in different locations, but I think modesty probably prevents Pete from commenting on Glassdoor, so I will. We have one of, if not the lowest rate of staff turnover, pardon me, 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.
To be voted ninth best place to work in the U.K. by employees is 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. 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. 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.
Yeah. Thanks, Chris. Can we open up for questions there, Carl?
Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, star and one if you wish to ask a question. Right now, sir, we have three participants and counting. Your first question comes from the line of Aynsley Lammin. Your line is now open.
Oh, great. Hi, morning. Happy New Year to everybody. Just two questions, actually. I know you don't like to give much guidance on site numbers, but obviously last year, the average sites were down 5%, and the current spot number, I think you give is down around 9%. Just wondered if you could say a bit more. Do you expect to be opening more sites as we enter this year? Would the site numbers be down by less than the 5% they were down in 2018? Secondly, obviously, you talk about the customer caution seen in London Southeast. Wonder if you could comment on markets in the Midlands and further north. Presumably, they're still strong and not showing any of that caution. 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.
Thanks, Aynsley. I think that was three questions, not two.
Two and a half.
On outlet 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. They're either already open, or we have planning and we're literally in the final stages. Our outlet opening risk in terms of its impact on 2019 completions is very low. As I touched on, the balance is, 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 us to be in a position where if conditions are weaker in the next six months, we're chasing a number and trying to do the wrong thing. What that would do would be to defer the growth into later 2020, but that's the swing factor more than 2019 volumes. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that's all very clear. Thanks.
Yeah. I think if you look at the Southeast market versus Midlands and the North, and we've touched on this before, I think people oversimplify and almost everybody has accepted that the London and the Southeast is weaker and is then 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. I actually don't think there's as big a difference as people would imply. We haven't suddenly seen a weakening in the Midlands and the North, but I think through the last 12 months, they've not quite been quite as strong as they were 12 months ago.
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. I'm not changing the position, but I do think there's just a slight mismessage sometimes that people like a simple story. The reality is, 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 and full years, and we didn't see that at all in December. There was no pattern of increased cancellations, nor was there anything like down valuation issues or any of those normal signals.
I'm looking at, in front of me, that sheet of four graphs that we sometimes use in presentations just to give you a broader sense of market resilience. If you looked at that with the trends of things like online appointment bookings and brochure requests and those sorts of things that we look at as forward indicators, if you looked at it, you would not see any trend that you thought, "Oh, I wonder what's going on there." Statistically, everything looks pretty normal.
Great. It's all very clear and helpful. Thanks.
No problem.
Your next question comes from the line of John Bell. Your line is now open. Mr. John Bell, 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, he may have a technical issue.
Sure, sir. 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 from me. I just wonder if you could comment on pricing trends through 2018 and how you saw that exit, and whether or not you feel there's enough in the system to offset the build cost inflation you're seeing. That's the first one. Second one's 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? The final one's just about this comment around significant growth in 2020. I'm just wondering if you could kind of flesh that out a little bit more. I think everyone interprets the word significantly differently, so I'd just welcome your thoughts on what you're implying by that.
Yep. Okay. First, if I deal with the renegotiation on land question first, and then the pricing, and then the growth. Yes and no. I think we've got a longer period now where I think landowners and particularly land promoters 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 not quite sure where the next few months will take us. Because of that, you've got a nervous set of landowners who want to close deals, and you've got slightly more sellers than buyers. We've said, although the land market has been good over the last four or five years in a historic context, it's been balanced.
I think that shift has gone further 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, when you get a sudden amount of uncertainty and deals suddenly halt post the referendum, actually, you get one or two marginal sellers who really panic or who desperately need the cash then. Now you've got a more general trend of uncertainty. Maybe the movements are smaller, but it's more general across all land deals. I don't think you could really see that in the overall land price statistics. I think what we see at the moment, you probably will start to.
It may change quite quickly in the new year, but it definitely through the last two to three months, there has been a shift in the level of confidence in the land market. That we have to see from our perspective as 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? It's a mix of all of the above.
Got you.
I think in terms of fleshing out the growth, I'm going to duck that question for now and come 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've got a bit more time, because it's about choices. It's not about we have the capacity, which we haven't really had for the last couple of years. As I said before, it will depend on seeing through land investments and the scale of the work in progress investments we make. I think the scale potential is significant, however you define it. It's the timing that's the choice. That's more of a strategic question, so better done, I think, face-to-face in a presentation.
On pricing, I think it's fair to say that it's also 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 six months, we've still seen net net a small positive price trend. Is it compared to say April last year, 1.5 %, something like that? It's that sort of order. That about offsets the cost movements, but it's close. There's not a lot of buffer there. It's my main reason we'd guide you to flat. We've got to push our own costs hard and make some savings. As we talked about in our strategy presentation back in April and May, we have some things in our own gift, so that all goes into the mix.
We still think that guidance is a good one, but the market's not going to do us any favors in that. We've got to work hard to make sure that happens.
That's great. Thanks so much.
No problem.
Okay. Your next question comes from the line of Andy Murphy. Your line is now open.
Morning, Pete. Morning, Chris. Happy New Year to you both. Quite a few of my questions have been answered, but I've still got a handful left. Just on the social housing up from 19%-23%, can you just talk a little bit about the trends behind that? What's the driver and whether that's going to be representative at a 23% level or different in sort of 2019 and 2020? On the forward sales being up, just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how that's been achieved and to what extent you maybe have been deferring or holding back sales, because obviously if that number's very good but your site numbers are down, it perhaps suggests that something else is going on. Finally, on the quality side of things, you said previously that you'd been striving to improve basically the customer experience to build quality.
Just wondering what you can point to say what you've done and what the evidence is 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 one?
Yeah. Shall I go first?
Sure.
Okay. In terms of the proportion of social housing, 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, there's been a greater desire for affordable homes more widely across the U.K. I think the 19% was probably a low. I think whilst the 23% is reasonably high, it's probably not the extreme. I think you were asking for guidance going forward. I would be saying closer to the 23% than the 19%. In terms of the forward sales, 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. We see that across all three of the divisions in the affordable order book, but mostly in London and the Southeast. That increase in affordable also obviously explains the 6% reduction in the blended ASP in that order book.
Thanks, Chris. Coming back to the quality question, Andy, I think there are two main types of measures that we are tracking. One is the pure customer feedback, and that measures, well, one kind of quality, which is final finish, the handover, what you tend to think of as number of snagging issues and the like. Yeah, we could both overall numbers and then specifics, like the number of snagging issues is a specific feedback number. Also increasingly, we're able to track specific quality measures. For instance, the NHBC started about three years ago Construction Quality Review audits, which are aimed to help businesses improve and test and work out where issues sit. We've seen material improvement during 2018 on all of those measures.
If you take the latter, the Construction Quality Reviews, our performance went from mid-table to top three during the course of 2018 across the 28 largest builders in the sector. If you look at our customer satisfaction scores, year to date scores have gone up to about 90.3, from 88 point something a year earlier. 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. 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 the potential for our policy Ombudsman.
Great. Okay. Thank you very much.
No worries.
Okay. Your next question comes from the line of Will Jones. Your line is now open.
Thanks. Morning, guys. I've got three if I could please as well. The first is whether it's just possible to give us the private volumes in the order book at year-end, please, separate from the social and how, if possible, that compared to the same point last year. 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 could just touch on that. Again, as we look to 2019, what's your, I guess, propensity to do bulk deals and how available are those, I guess, in the marketplace generally?
The last one was just touching base on mix for the ASP. I think in November you talked about a couple of percent on mix in 2019. From 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? If so, what's helping get that mix back up as a positive? Thanks.
Sorry. I got the last question where it was about mix, I was still noting down the previous bit. Can you-
Sorry. Yeah. I think you talked about it being a couple of percent positive on mix for the ASP in 2019. Thinking back to previous comments, 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?
Yeah. 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. I personally tend to think about it more how far ahead we're selling on each individual site. We've touched on this before. If our sites are selling less than three months ahead, I think it starts to impact on price and confidence. It's not the end of the world, it's not ideal. If they're selling more than six months ahead, it tends to impact on service and accuracy of forecasting of delivery timetables.
The sweet spot is probably somewhere around 4.5 -5.5 months, and we are comfortably in that range at the moment on the majority of sites. It is that balance, and we look at then at individual sales rates site by site as well. Whilst inevitably from an external and macro point of view, look at an order book number, I think that timing of when we are selling. Have we got a decent amount on release on each site? Are we actually not selling from finished stock or close to finished stock, improve confidence for customers and for our own sales?
Yeah.
Think about it. You are right, there was a bulk deal . That is relatively unusual for us. I think the decision for us is very much about, it is a period of uncertainty. We have kind of been very clear that making sure that the order book was as strong as possible at the end of 2018 is a key point. We were not particularly trying to fill a gap. It was not big enough for that. The pricing felt right, the timing felt right. It felt like the right thing to do. There are things out there. It is relatively rare, I think, that they come together and you think that is the right price and that is the right balance. Although there is lots of interest, it is not something that we particularly feel the need to chase.
Impact on the year, relatively small, which is why we have not sort of talked about it, but have not particularly quoted it. Sales rates, for instance, would still be ahead year-over-year and those sorts of things. It does not distort any of those underlying sort of messages. I do not expect us particularly to be doing something similar in the next three months. Will something similar happen in 2019? Maybe. It is institutional backed money, but through a Registered Provider. It is a fairly normal deal, I think, across the sector, but just felt like a good timing to have that extra strength in the order book.
Great.
It is a really hard question to answer because it is movement of lots of small things. You are right. We expect 2019 to be very low on Central London completions. We see sort of completions going back in from Central London in 2020 and 2021. The reason over 2018 and 2019, you still see a small positive mix variance by that is just quality of locations. It is more that than big regional shifts, where I do not think we see a meaningful shift from north to south. It is more just the quality of locations at an individual regional level. It is not particularly bigger product either. Our average sort of reflective is pretty stable. It is just generally, you have seen the strategy go to the has been able to get locations at a regional level.
Great. Thank you. Just the one follow-up on the order book. Would you be willing to give the private units in the order book at the moment?
Oh, sorry, yeah.
Thank you.
I don't have the exact number. The private number is very flat, which is why the reference in the statement to the growth comes from affordable housing. Do you have the absolute number to hand, Chris? I don't have it on the sheet in front of me.
Yeah. 3,852, Will.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Okay. Your next question comes from the line of Gregor Kuglitsch. Your line's now open.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. There's only a couple left. 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 sentence 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 for some modest compression. I think the number that you flagged was something like 50 basis points as we think about 2019. I want to understand if anything has changed in that position, and perhaps today, you have some visibility in your order book what the margin is relative to the 2018 outturn. If you could give us some color there, that would be helpful.
Secondly, this perhaps is not a question necessarily for a trading update call, but I'll ask it regardless. Obviously, you're committing your GBP 600 million dividend payment. I think that works out as something like 12%-13% 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.
Okay. Just on margins, I was referring to flat margins, but I don't see that as being fundamentally different from what we said in November about the potential for sort of 50 basis points compression. It's very small numbers in difference at the beginning of the year. Yeah. As I touched on in terms of the balance between price and cost, it feels hard to see an enormous amount of upside in the balance on price and cost this year. We're not seeing a huge amount of downside either, but the balance is probably on the 50 basis points downside. No real change from November, but pretty flat overall. In terms of share buyback, I think you probably know.
If you don't, it's certainly no secret because we wrote to all of our shareholders that we got a shareholder approval 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. It doesn't mean we expect to use it. In fact, in the very short term before the results, we couldn't use it because we're in a closed period. 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 and 2021, and where the share price is, it would be irresponsible of us not to at least be considering it.
I don't want you to take that as a strong indication that we will definitely do it, but we wanted to make sure that depending on how things go, both in terms of the share price and trading over the course of the next three to four months, that we have the potential to do share buybacks if it felt right. We're certainly open-minded about it, but please don't take that as a signal that you should expect something in the immediate future. I'm sure we'll come back to that at the prelims.
Thanks. Just to be clear, if you were to, I understand you have the authority to do buybacks, 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, favor buybacks, certain investors very wedded to dividend structure. We're not naive about the impact of doing it in various different ways. It does depend massively on the circumstances. Where the share price sits, where we see trading, where the balance sheet sits. I'm not going to pin it down any more than that. We're open-minded about the various different options. It would be wrong given the volatility in the share price and the underlying strength of trading for us at least not to be thinking about it at this point.
Understood. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
No problem.
Okay. Your next question comes from the line of Glynis Johnson. Your line is now open.
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 WIP on site, your product, your materials on site. Are you changing how you're running the business given the uncertainty on Brexit and what will happen around the March time?
Yeah, I think we've touched on the main areas, Glynis. It's undoubtedly affected the marginal land purchases in November and December. It's affected our drive for a strong order book at the end of the year. It's affected our desire to just protect cash that little bit more and give ourselves just that bit more flexibility. I would say it's not in a material way affected where we are with work in progress. We feel work in progress is reasonably under control in our businesses. We're well covered by the scale of the forward order book. Across the whole of the business, across the cost base, across how we're investing in new skills, it's there in the background just perhaps tweaking those individual decisions. 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.
Thank you.
Okay. Your next question comes from the line of Brijesh Siya . Your line is now open.
Hi. I have two. Well, those are kind of answered. The first one is on incentive levels. Are you seeing any kind of spike in the incentive level, probably end of the year or early this year? Have you seen any spike happening there? I mean, customers are asking for more goodies or putting extra things into homes. The second one is on the land. I see your comment about your timing issues led to additional cash generation for this year. Is it also a conscious decision from your side 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 one year?
Yeah, no, thank you for both those. On incentive levels, no, we haven't seen any change. You will all know, we always talk about pricing net of incentives anyway, so you would see that in all of our other comments. No, I don't think I need to explain that in the prime central London market, there are more incentives than there were three years ago, but not particularly more incentives than there were six months ago. 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 there to be a change in timing, as in we might have delayed the purchase, but still keep that option open.
Yes, I think there is, 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 we'd be as conceited as to view that we could change that overall, but there's a responsibility to make sure 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. It is a conscious view. Is the phenomenon I'm talking about related to our longer-term plan that our land bank will shorten as volumes grow? Less so because the 2,000 or so plots I was talking about was relative to our plans perhaps six or nine months earlier for 2018.
Those plans already reflected that view of a shorter land bank over time. It's more about the shorter-term market uncertainty and the opportunities in the land bank than it is about that longer-term strategy.
Thank you.
Okay, sir, your last question comes from the line of Mr. John Bell. Your line is now open.
Morning all. Apologies, I got cut off earlier. I've got three questions for you, actually. Firstly, could you just comment on the land creditor position at the year-end? 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, albeit at this early stage
Thirdly, you've got one 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.
Yeah. Do you want to pick up the land creditor last, Chris? If I touch on the years sort of forward indicators in central London?
Yeah, no problem.
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 two to three years, sort of and were through the December period. 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." They're very much in line. In terms of our newer central London schemes, I'm not going to go into individual sales rates, but sales performance on both pricing and rate has been where we expected on pricing and ahead of where we expected on rate. To be honest, I know this sounds a little bit wrong, but to be honest, is what we'd have expected in this kind of environment.
We'd have been relatively cautious on both, for us to be ahead on rate is what we would want to see, rather than being a massive shock. Chris, do you want to pick up the land creditor?
Well, actually, I think John's referring to Mount Pleasant, isn't he?
Yeah.
I actually popped down there last week, and since we launched in September, we've had something like 45 sales. That is a scheme that's looking good on both build and sales front. On land creditors, they've increased by about GBP 70 million since the half year, the increase in net cash obviously means that adjusted gearing has actually reduced. Buying larger sites obviously increases the opportunities for deferral on attractive terms, and the numbers tend to reflect that.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Okay, that's.
Sorry, go on.
Yes, sir. We have one question last. It's from Andy Murphy. Your line is now open.
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 you're 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 and what activity you're actually, action you're taking.
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. On things like bricks, where we've had a degree of imports over the growth in the market, that level of imports has already dropped off pre-Brexit kind of discussions anyway. It's more about our procurement teams being close to our customer base to make sure that we see any potential bottlenecks for them. We also have, as you all know, which is unusual in the sector, an internal business called Taylor Wimpey 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's necessary is very small, but it's something obviously we're watching pretty closely. 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.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Andy.
That concludes our Q&A session for today. I will now hand over back to Pete Redfern for his closing remarks.
Thank you, Carl. Thanks everybody for the questions, and thank you for the number and depth of the questions. I think, hopefully our position is fairly clear. We're pleased with 2018. We're 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 the best end of potential market performances, we can take advantage of that, particularly into 2020 and beyond. If it's a bit tougher, the business is in as strong a position as it possibly can be. I think you can see from the stats and our comments that we're on top of both of those. Thank you very much, and look forward to catching up properly in a couple of months.