House sales grow for Persimmon
Housebuilder Persimmon has seen revenue and completions rise in the first six months of 2020.
Revenue was £1.84 billion from £1.19bn a year before. For 2019 before the pandemic half year revenue was £1.75bn.
Legal completions were up from 4,900 to 7,406, but slightly down on the 7,584 in the first half of 2019 for the group, which has its West Midlands office in Wolverhampton and is currently building homes in the Black Country, Shropshire and Staffordshire.
Chief executive Dean Finch said: "Persimmon performed well during the first half of the year delivering new home sales completions approaching the levels achieved in the first half of 2019. I am particularly pleased that we are continuing to achieve pre-Covid build rates across our sites whilst successfully maintaining higher levels of build quality and customer service."
He added that customer demand for its new homes has been strong right across the UK with healthy sales reservation rates through the period.
The group had a forward order book at the end of June of £1.82bn.
"In supporting the Group's high quality growth we are taking advantage of attractive land investment opportunities and successfully brought over 10,000 new plots into the business across 48 locations in the period. We remain focused on progressing our pipeline of new sales outlets through the planning system and into production, and on our ongoing build programmes, to provide improved stock availability and choice for our customers.
"Persimmon is well placed for the future with a strong balance sheet and healthy liquidity," said Mr Finch.
The group has set aside £75 million to assist with works to ensure the safety of residents of multi-occupancy properties built by Persimmon which contain banned cladding. All relevant management companies, managing agents, or building owners have been contacted and this work is progressing.
