Berkeley’s profit drops by 31%
Berkeley Group has seen its pretax profit fall by 31% to £276.7m, having previously flagged an end to its period of bumper earnings in June.
The London and South East-focused housebuilder said in its latest results that its pretax profit had “now returned to normal level following the successful delivery of a number of central London developments acquired in the period from 2009 to 2013”.
For the six months to October, earnings per share were down by 28.3% to 176.4p and revenue fell by 43% to £931m.
Berkeley Group has seen its pretax profit fall by 31% to £276.7m, having previously flagged an end to its period of bumper earnings in June.
The London and South East-focused housebuilder said in its latest results that its pretax profit had “now returned to normal level following the successful delivery of a number of central London developments acquired in the period from 2009 to 2013”.
For the six months to October, earnings per share were down by 28.3% to 176.4p and revenue fell by 43% to £931m.
Berkeley sold 1,389 homes during the period at an average price of £644,000, compared to 2,027 in 2018 at an average selling price of £740,000.
The group reported that the value of its net assets nudged up by 2.8% to just over £3bn, equating to net asset value per share of £24.25, up by 5.2% from £23.05 at 30 April 2019.
Berkeley ended the period with net cash of just over £1bn, including banking facilities totalling £750m consisting of a drawn £300m term loan and an undrawn £450m revolving credit facility.
Cash due on forward sales was £1.9bn and the company estimated a future gross margin in its land holdings of £6.3bn.
Berkeley said it expected build cost to remain at around 4% per annum due to “capacity in certain trades with London residential starts so low and less activity in the retail sector, offsetting the wider risks that exist around Brexit and political uncertainty”.
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