Telford Homes profit and revenue rise as build to rent pays off

London-focused residential property developer Telford Homes posted a rise in first-half profit and revenue on Wednesday, underpinned by its shift towards the build to rent market.

In the six months to 30 September, pre-tax profit was up 16.1% to £10.1m on revenue of £129.6m, up 31% on the same period a year ago.

The adjusted gross margin for the half was 23.2%, down from 26.5%, mostly due to a changing mix of build to rent and individual open market sales with an increasing proportion of build to rent lowering the gross margin.

The company, which lifted its interim dividend by 6.3% to 8.5p a share, said the current development pipeline stands at just over 5,000 homes, including Parkside in Nine Elms, and has a gross development value of £1.65bn.

Despite lower liquidity on the back of Brexit uncertainty, it has continued to secure individual sales, particularly for homes below £600,000, on developments that are complete or close to completion. These sales have typically been to first time owner-occupiers, many of whom have purchased under the Help to Buy scheme.

The company said it was pleased about the government's decision to extend the Help to Buy scheme until 2023. However, it insisted that an end to the scheme would not be a material risk to the group given that it has only made just under 100 sales using Help to Buy over the five years since it was introduced.

Chief executive officer Jon Di-Stefano said: "Telford Homes made pleasing progress during the first half of the financial year, despite an increasingly uncertain economic and political backdrop. Our strategic shift towards purpose built rental homes sold to institutional investors continues to be beneficial to our risk profile and growth potential whilst also being well timed in terms of the changing requirements of our typical customers in London."

Telford said there's more work to be done for it to achieve its original target of exceeding £50m of total pre-tax profit for the year to 31 March 2019 and Brexit "brings a certain amount of unpredictability to that".

Shares in the property developer tanked last month after it warned that negative sentiment around Brexit meant customers were asking for price reductions or adopting a "wait and see" approach before making any big investments.

At 0910 GMT, the shares were up 1.5% to 304p.