Member Article

Pretax profits soar to £390.2 million at Barratts Developments

Newcastle-founded property group Barratt Developments has announced an increase in pretax profit to £390.2 million in its final results, compared to just £104.5 million at the end of the last financial year.

The firm has also reported an increase in revenue of 8.6% to £3.1 billion from £2.6 billion last year.

Housebuilding operating profit at the firm increased by 62.6% to £410.8 million, from £252.7 million before exceptional items.

The company, which has approved the purchase of £3.8 billion of land since 2009, has reported that 65% of completions were from newly acquired high margin land, compared to 49% last year.

Barratt has also reported a net cash value of £73.1 million, compared to a net debt of £25.9 million at the end of the last financial year.

Completions for the full year were up 8.6% at 14,838, in comparison to 13,663 in 2013.

Private completions were up by 8.7% to 11,936 from 10,978, affordable completions were slightly down at 2,255 from 2,268 in 2013, and JV completions were at 647, up from 417 last year.

Mark Clare, group chief executive of Barratt Developments PLC said: “This significant improvement in performance has been driven by the £3.8bn we have committed to land investment since mid-2009, together with the recovering market and improvements in design, quality and efficiency. Our disciplined approach will support a further significant increase in performance this year and we are now targeting a return on capital of at least 25% by FY17. Our special cash payment programme for the next three years combined with our ordinary dividend, is expected to return around £950m of cash to our shareholders.”

Image Copyright Roger Davies and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .