AGM Statement

RNS Number : 5534I

Inland Homes PLC

27 November 2018

 

27 November 2018

Inland Homes plc

(the 'Company' or the 'Group')

AGM Statement

Inland Homes plc (AIM: INL), a leading housebuilder, Partnership Housing developer and regeneration specialist, provides the following statement ahead of its Annual General Meeting today, 27 November 2018, at 11:00am.

The Group's strategy to focus on affordably priced, good quality homes for sale in the South East of England, Partnership Housing and land trading is providing a platform for strong operational and financial performance during the rest of the financial year.  

Our most recent initiatives, Rosewood Housing and Hugg Homes, will enable us to further reinforce our affordable housing offering and capture additional value from our assets. Both are expected to begin delivering recurring income later this financial year.

The first five months of the current financial year have been in line with our expectations.

Stephen Wicks, CEO at Inland Homes, commented: "The market remains supportive for Inland Homes, with healthy demand for affordably priced homes in the South East and a number of encouraging measures announced by the Government that should benefit us.

"We have made progress in a number of areas across the business since announcing our full year results. We continue to leverage our specialist core development skills to secure planning consents across the portfolio, whilst devising innovative solutions to procure the best outcome for each site and exploring a range of new opportunities.

"The investment we have made in our housebuilding operations has allowed us to significantly increase our construction output, whilst improving certainty of delivery and providing cost efficiency benefits. These areas together with the strong relationships we have in place with housing associations, local authorities and other stakeholders provides us with a sound business model for our future growth ambitions."

West Cliff Road (formerly Wessex Hotel), Bournemouth

A site with consent for 88 apartments and a 105-bed hotel. As announced in June, we have signed a pre-let with Premier Inn for a 25-year lease, with a starting rent of £588,000 per annum and we recently signed a conditional forward sale agreement with Aviva Investors who will purchase the hotel at practical completion for £13.3m, which is expected in mid 2020.

Cheshunt Lakeside, Hertfordshire

We continue to make good progress on our master planning application for 1,853 homes on this site and anticipate a favourable planning decision early in the New Year. We have received strong interest from a number of major housing associations and PRS funds to work with us on this major project.

Wilton Park, Beaconsfield

Negotiations with the local authority are ongoing and hinge on the level of affordable housing we are willing to provide on this prime 100-acre site that has an allocation for over 300 homes. The site continues to generate significant rental income from residential and commercial occupiers whilst we negotiate the planning application.

Land bank

Land owned or controlled stands at approximately 7,000 plots, of which some 1,700 are consented, with a further approximately 2,000 in the planning pipeline. We also have 750 plots where terms have been agreed, including a major regeneration scheme for 325 units in East London.

The newly strengthened land team are making great strides and are being encouraged to use our positive market reputation and covenant to create short-term trading opportunities, the first of which is expected to generate an attractive return for the Company.

Partnership Housing

The current construction order book of approximately £90m is progressing well, and we are encouraged that, as a result of the significant investment in our in-house build capacity, margins coming through are better than we originally expected. A further £60m of new opportunities are being negotiated.

Land sales

Completion has recently taken place on a sale of 386 plots at Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire, to a top-ten housebuilder, where we are managing the project on behalf of a third party investor. This transaction has generated us a management fee of over £7m.

Rosewood Housing

After a 30 months registration period, our subsidiary has obtained approval from the regulator as a "for profit" registered provider of affordable housing. This will enable us to build and hold affordable housing units, that we will offer alongside our private homes for sale, collecting rental income and the long-term value of shared ownership homes.

Hugg Homes

Our modular temporary homes company has now installed its first development of 22 units in Southampton. We aim to secure temporary planning consents, typically 3-5 years, and pre-let the units to local authorities and other parties to provide high quality, low cost homes.

Local authorities view our offering of good quality temporary homes as a real alternative to bed and breakfast / hostel accommodation. The units are portable and can be easily transported to a new location at the end of the term or when the site is required for redevelopment.

Private housing

We are on target to complete 80 homes in the first half, in line with expectations, at an average selling price of £252,000.

At the end of October we opened our Jasmine Park development of 94 homes in Ipswich and have achieved 12 sales to date at prices in excess of what we forecast.

We also opened a further outlet at Farriers Wood, Garston, near Watford for 100 homes two weeks ago and have secured two sales, again above forecast. In January 2019, we have a major launch of our Centre Square (formerly Lily's Walk and Castle House) development of 279 units located in the town centre of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.

Outlook

We very much welcomed the extension of the highly successful Help to Buy scheme announced in the Budget, with around 60% of our buyers using this very important aid to get onto the housing ladder.

With a firm focus on providing homes that are affordably priced, a strong partnership division and a first-class land bank in attractive areas outside London, we believe we are in good shape to continue growing our business and delivering another year of positive progress.

Enquiries:

Inland Homes plc Stephen Wicks, Chief Executive	Tel: [phone]
Nishith Malde, Finance Director
Panmure Gordon (UK) Limited (Nominated Adviser, Financial Adviser and Broker):	Tel: [phone]
Dominic Morley Erik Anderson
FTI Consulting:	Tel: [phone]
Dido Laurimore
Claire Turvey Richard Gotla
Methuselah Tanyanyiwa

 

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