Foxtons swings to profit, reinstates dividend

Estate agent Foxtons hailed its best first-half results on Thursday since 2016 amid an improvement in the sales market, as it reinstated its dividend and announced a £3m share buyback programme.

In the six months to the end of June, the company swung to a statutory pre-tax profit of £3.3m from a loss of £4.3m in the same period a year ago, on revenue of £66.9m, up from £40.4m. Compared with 2019, revenue was up 29%.

There was growth across all business areas, with lettings revenue of £33.1m compared to 25.7m in 2020, while sales revenues came in at £28.6m compared to £11.1m and revenue in the broking arm was £5.2m, up from £3.6m. Against 2019, revenues were up 2%, 86% and 31%, respectively.

Foxtons reinstated its ordinary dividend with a payment of 0.18p per share with respect to the half year period and announced a £3m share buyback programme to return excess capital to shareholders.

"This is a positive performance after several years of weakness in the London market," Foxtons said.

"Following the election result at the end of 2019 there were promising signs in the sales market but this recovery proved to be nascent and was halted by the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused a severe market dislocation.

"However, there will always be a need for people to move house and as 2021 progressed and restrictions eased we saw confidence return across sales and lettings. This confidence combined with the extension to the stamp duty relief resulted in an 86% increase in sales revenue in the first half compared to H1 2019."

Foxtons cautioned that the second half is likely to be quieter than the first as the stamp duty relief tapers, but said there are signs of sufficient underlying confidence in the market to support a more sustained recovery.