Taylor Wimpey plc is holding its Annual General Meeting at 11:00 today in London, where the following comments will be made regarding current trading, financial performance and the outlook for the financial year.
The Group as a whole has performed in line with our expectations in a gradually improving, but still uncertain, trading environment.
Taylor Wimpey report:
We entered 2010 with a strong order book position and have continued to focus on building on this sales momentum and enhancing margins. We are approximately 99% sold for the half year and 74% sold for the full year targeted completions.
Private sales rates remain in line with those achieved in the equivalent period of 2009 at an average of 0.61 sales per site per week net of cancellations. Cancellations are running at long-term low levels of 14.8% for the year to date, which is also a significant improvement on the 18.5% in the equivalent period of 2009.
Prices achieved on sales of private homes are up by approximately 9% on the equivalent period in 2009, of which around 5% results from active changes in mix and approximately 4% from underlying price increases.
We remain active in the land market, focusing our attention on the opportunities available to acquire good quality land at attractive prices.
Group financial position
We have generated further cash since the year end and net debt stands at c£660 million, in line with our plans (31/12/2009: £750.9 million).
Outlook
We are encouraged by the ongoing signs of improvement across our main markets. Although economic and political risks remain in the UK, we believe that the underlying shortfall of new build housing and the strong levels of demand will continue to underpin the market. However, we remain concerned that the shortage of consented land will artificially constrain industry volume recovery in the medium term.
In the US, we continue to expect to see relatively volatile sales patterns over the next few months, settling into a sustainable recovery towards the end of this year. The Canadian market has continued to perform well and we expect this to be maintained.
Our active cost reduction, high quality landbank and strong order book position us well to increase profitability as markets recover.
