Vistry Group H1 2025 Earnings Report

Vistry Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 17.60
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Vistry Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Vistry Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2025
• Date: 9/10/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 3:30AM ET

Vistry Group (LON:VTY) is one of the UK’s leading homebuilders with a top tier housebuilder and leading Partnerships business. Our purpose is to develop sustainable new homes and communities across all sectors of the housing market through our leading brands, Bovis Homes, Linden Homes, Vistry Partnerships and Drew Smith. Our housebuilding division operates across 13 business units, each with a regional office, which are developing hundreds of sites across England. The design and construction of our housing ranges blend tradition and innovation, creating homes and developments with contemporary living standards. Following the acquisition of Countryside Partnerships, Vistry’s Partnerships division is a market leader in the high-growth partnerships business. It combines both partner delivery and development-led capabilities and has a hard-earned reputation for delivery, quality and sector knowledge across all housing tenures. The business works closely with Governmental bodies, housing associations and local authorities through its 10 operating business units, each with its own regional office. Sustainability is embedded throughout the business and is core to delivering our strategic priorities. Our vision and framework are formed on and backed by a science-based approach to net zero carbon emissions. We are ambitious in our sustainability targets which focus on three key areas of people, operations and homes and communities. We are proud of our award-winning team which has retained the maximum 5-star HBF customer satisfaction rating. Vistry is also an accredited Living Wage employer and supports learners through on-site skills academies. Our initiatives aim to deliver value for all of Vistry’s key stakeholders.

Vistry Group H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Half-year performance was in line with expectations, with net debt down to £293 million—over £100 million lower than forecast—putting Vistry on track to deliver increasing profits for 2025.
• Positive Sentiment: Refinancing secured on same terms with eight banks extends facilities to April 2028, and additional uncommitted lines support short-term cash management.
• Positive Sentiment: Vistry’s market-leading partnerships platform spans 156 partners, including Homes England as a strategic partner, with 58,000 homes under contract and five-star satisfaction across customers and partners.
• Positive Sentiment: Unprecedented government backing—£39 billion affordable housing program, 10-year rent settlement, rent convergence, and equal fund access—is significantly boosting sector funding capacity.
• Negative Sentiment: Building safety costs remain elevated, with £40 million of expected cash outflows in H2 and a similar run rate anticipated into the next year.

Presentation

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Vistry's Half Year Results for 2025. I'm joined today by Tim Lawlor, Chief Financial Officer, and Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration. The agenda: very quick introduction from myself, over to Tim for the financials. The highlight of the day is going to be Stephen going through where we are with the markets. Hopefully, Stephen hasn't used all his energy chasing down the one taxi outside Paddington Station this morning, knocking out of the way all lots of old people. We had to get here on time. Hopefully, Stephen's OK for that. I'll give an operational update and then an outlook, and of course, we'll take questions at the end. We won't be just taking questions from the floor for the first time. We will also be taking questions from people watching on the TV, for want of a better word.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

The headlines: delighted to say that the half-year performance was very much in line with expectations. We are very confident, as you'll see as we go through the presentation, that we are on track to deliver increasing profits for 2025 over and above 2024. A good testament to that is the serious share buying I've done in the first six months of the year. Half-year debt was down to £293 million. We say significantly lower than expectations. Putting that into some numbers, that's over £100 million less than we were expecting. A fantastic performance on that. We successfully completed refinancing on exactly the same terms with our eight banks. Tim and the team did incredibly well there. Not to be underestimated, the banks, of course, did extensive due diligence on the company to do that. That takes us out to April 2028. Excellent partnership and open market customer satisfaction.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

As Stephen always reminds us, we're the only company, well, we're the only national company anyway in the partnership space, but we're the only company that gets feedback from our housing association and local authority partners. Both the private HBF scores five star, but we're also five star with our partners. The government's unprecedented £39 billion affordable housing program provides a long-term level of funding and visibility. Just as importantly, the 10-year rent settlement, rent convergence, and equal access to the building safety fund add to this funding capacity. Stephen will be talking a lot about that during his section. Vistry, as you all know, is uniquely positioned to maximize on this huge opportunity and play a key role in delivering a step up to the much-needed affordable housing that this country so desperately needs. Tim.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Thanks, Greg. Morning, everybody. I've been encouraged by a number of people to speed through the finance slides so we can get to the more exciting slides that Stephen's going to be presenting later. As Pink Floyd once said, you can't have your pudding if you don't eat your meat. On with the meat. Headlines of the group results. A lot of this is relatively old news. We reported a fairly detailed trading update at the start of July, and I'm very conscious that it's been two months since then. Next year, we're going to aim to get our reporting done in early August. Prepare your summer holiday schedules next year for an earlier announcement so we can crack on with the second half of the year without the distraction of a later results announcement.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

The headlines in terms of the group results, as Greg said, it was a slower first half than we've had in prior years, but it was as expected. We've stabilized the business and we've created the foundations for H2 delivery. We retain the confidence in the delivery of the full year numbers after H1. Within the numbers, we've restated H1 24 to reflect the South Division issues from last year. The impact of that is a £65 million impact to gross profits and to PVT from the numbers that we reported at this time last year. Revenue down 6% year on year, largely driven by partner-funded volumes, which was impacted by the just expected uncertainties ahead of the spending review. Stephen will talk a bit more about that later.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Our margins for the first half of the year were the same as the gross margins for the second half of last year, at 6.7%. The operating margin was partly impacted by the lower volumes, so lower operating leverage. We had a higher proportion of low margin sites in the first half of this year. We expect in the second half, part of our margin recovery story will be that the proportion of higher margin sites will increase as new margins come on stream and some of the older legacy sites start to disappear. I'll point out the EPS position relative to the profit after tax position. We're starting to see some of the benefit coming through from the buyback program. Since the start of January last year, we've spent over £220 million on share buybacks.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

That's starting to create a differential between year-on-year EPS movements and year-on-year profit movements of about 3% so far. The final point I'll bring out from this slide is the net deposition. As Greg mentioned, significantly ahead of where we expected to be at the half year and ahead of last year, despite the fact that we opened with a significantly higher opening net deposition. Turning to revenue, year-on-year volumes down 12%. As you can see from the table on the left, the biggest drop was in partner-funded, again due to the market uncertainty, but we're expecting that to recover back in the second half of the year. In terms of open market units, the market was pretty similar to last year. The drop in units year-on-year is more attributable to having a lower number of sales outlets in the first half than last year.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

The sales outlets numbers are increasing again in the second half. Although the average selling price was up 3.7% year-on-year, that was largely due to mixed factors. I don't think there was an underlying price movement in the open market. What we saw in partner-funded was that ASP went up as a result of a higher proportion of southern-based delivery, where prices are slightly higher in the south than the north. In the open market, the mix change was more due to product mix. Slightly more larger houses being sold in the first half than the prior period. I wouldn't read too much into that. That's probably a temporary fluctuation. The other thing to say on pricing is that the discounting and incentive levels were similar in the first half to the previous year of up to 5%.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

In terms of the mix within the business, partner-funded was 73% of the units in the first half of the year. We expect that will change to be above 75% in the second half of the year. Within partner-funded, there was a mixed shift. There was a lower proportion of POS sales in the first half of the year than the previous half. That was partly due to the large transaction that we did, a large portfolio deal that we did in 2024, which didn't repeat in 2025. Having said that, going forward, we do think that there will be a slight shift in emphasis from POS towards additional over the course of the next few months and maybe the next couple of years even, because of the relative attractiveness of the additional market, additionality market, the affordable market compared to the POS market. Stephen will touch on that later.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Working our way down through operating profit, as I said before, the H1 gross margin was consistent with H2 of last year. Billed cost inflation is, as we previously reported it, low single digit, slightly higher on labor than on materials, but low single digit overall. We're not seeing any significant change there. Overheads is up in absolute terms from last year. There was some additional investment in assurance resources as part of enhancing our control environment. There's also a slight increase from pay rises and national insurance contributions. That margin increase from H1 to H2, which supports our higher growth in the second half of the year or higher profitability in the second half of the year, three main things that comes from. Number one, the newer developments that are starting in the second half of the year that we'd expect to be at higher margins.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Second, that the affordable housing market's becoming more attractive and we should expect to get better terms and more competition for our support. The third is the operating leverage that comes from those higher volumes. Working our way all the way down to reported profits. Finance costs, we saw the benefit of lower interest rates. Average net debt went up slightly year on year, up to £6.95 million from £6.59 million last year. We'd expect the average net debt in the second half of the year to be slightly higher than the average net debt in the first half of the year because we're building in the third quarter and our income is more skewed towards the fourth quarter. The average cost of debt fell as the interest rate cuts came through. That was offset by an unwind on discount of land creditors.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

You know about this accounting funny, but we're still seeing the benefit, still seeing the impact of the higher discounting as interest rates went up a couple of years ago, working its way through the land creditor system. That should plateau soon, but that was a 3.8% impact for the half year. In terms of tax, we report an adjusted effective tax rate of 27.9%, but a reported tax rate of closer to 23%. The adjusted effective tax rate is effectively the corporation tax plus the RPDT, but we don't get hit with all of the RPDT because it doesn't apply to all of our business. In particular, the 100% partner-funded stuff doesn't attract any RPDT. The exceptionals were up. The prime driver on that was the voluntary contribution we made to the CMA, which we reported back in July.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Our contribution there was 12.8% of the £100 million total across the seven house builders. We're recording that as an exceptional item that is expected to be paid and settled in the second half of the year. We've also got an incremental building safety cost of £3.5 million, which I will come to now. Building safety, pretty as you were, we had a significant increase at the end of last year. In the first half of this year, there were a few buildings that were added, seven buildings added in the first half of the year, more than offset by a good level of recoveries that we had from insurers and others in the first half of the year. £6.7 million of recoveries in the first half of the year, £4.9 million of additions. We're making good progress in working through the provision with 20 buildings completed.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Cash outflow in the first half of the year was 18.3%. We expect that in the second half, as we get onto more sites and really get momentum, the cash outflow will be up to £40 million in the second half of the year. That sort of run rate will probably continue into next year. In terms of the cash flow, year-on-year performance, significant improvement year-on-year. Last year we had a net cash outflow of £233 million. Despite having £40 million lower profit in the first half of the year, our net cash flow actually improved by £120 million year-on-year. You can see the constituent parts of the cash flow here. First of all, WIP, during the course of the year, we've implemented much tighter WIP controls, much to the chagrin of some of our site managers, but we are managing WIP extremely tightly.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

You'd always expect a seasonal increase in the first half of the year, probably more so than ever this year given the weighting of our second half delivery. The £99 million of WIP increase is largely driven by that seasonal trend. However, that masks some improvements made in the finished stock levels. We've been targeting reducing our finished stock levels. Outside London, where it's a slightly different market and London is more constrained, more challenging sales environment, outside London, our finished stock levels are down by £46 million, which is more than half from where we were at the end of last year. Good progress there in releasing cash from stock. Land, Greg will cover land in more detail later. We're running down our land bank a little bit. There's net £20 million of cash release from land.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Land down by £40 million, but we have reduced our land creditor balance by £20 million as well in the first half of the year. In terms of payables and receivables, both payables and receivables are down. We're collecting our cash faster in terms of the receivables. Payables is down partly due to lower levels of deferred income. The net investments in joint ventures cause us a lot of head-scratching when people start trying to reconcile to reported and statutory numbers. Statutory numbers are hugely confused by all of the technicalities of the form with which money moves between us and the joint ventures. The substance of the cash movements of the joint ventures is this, that we put £33 million of net cash into joint ventures, largely to fund WIP in the first half of the year.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

The form of that investment can take the form of operating, investing, or financing flows. It appears in different parts of the statutory cash flow, which causes, frankly, unnecessary headaches for everybody. I covered building safety and the restructuring costs are as expected. Net tax payments were £10 million. Capital employed is very similar to this point last year, driven by the same sort of dynamics that we just looked at on the cash flow. Up on the year-end position, continuing to buy land selectively and increases will support the increases in WIP and joint ventures will support our second half delivery. As Greg mentioned, we had a very smooth process. We've got a high quality of banking teams that support us. Some of them are in today.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

We're very grateful for their support in running a very smooth process during the course of the second quarter to get the refinancing complete by the start of July. Everything on the same terms with the same banking group and same shares. The maturity has moved out, as you can see from the table here, out to April 2028, which gives us a little bit more time to stabilize and to capture the opportunities that lie ahead in the affordable space. We've also got a couple of uncommitted facilities, the trade cycle loan and the money market line, which add £125 million of facility. We tend to use those, as I've explained before, to manage short-term cash fluctuations. You can ensure that we're not sitting with too much money effectively on deposit by using these facilities. Finally on this, the headwind against the covenants.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

We've got significant levels of headwind against our covenants at the half year. The three covenants there are reported and explained in the ONS if you want more details. Last for me, capital allocation. No change to the capital allocation policy. We're making good progress with our share buyback program, which we announced this time last year, £130 million. £71 million of that has been spent. We expect to complete that program at some point in Q2 next year. We remain committed to shareholder distributions. It's a core part of our strategy. At the time of our results next year, we'll provide an update on our expectations for distributions in 2026. That's it for me. Over to Stephen.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Good morning, everyone. Good to see you all. Thanks, Tim. I've never been introduced as a pudding before. It's very good. An awful lot has happened since our last statement in our operating environment and our market. I'm going to cover four key aspects. I want to give you four key messages that demonstrate what a unique and compelling opportunity there is in the partnership space to contribute towards the government's delivery of housing and contribute to the value within the business. I'm going to cover our market leading position and how that's contributed to momentum in the first half, despite the fact that it's been a subdued market. We're going to focus on those unprecedented, as Greg said, government commitments to housing investment. Then look at an interpretation of how that will contribute and build capacity within the sector and allow us to deliver an increase in affordable housing.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Finally, look at the impacts for Vistry, both in the near and the medium term. Looking at how our scale, which is the key thing here, has contributed towards delivery momentum. You can see there we are working with 156 partners. No one else is working with that range of partners in this space. During that half year, we transacted with 36 partners. More than one transaction with some of them, but 36 different partners. That included six new partners.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

New partners who were PRS providers, new partners as housing associations, and new partners who were local authorities.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Greg will be particularly pleased because one of them is from Wales. That's good. That has helped us contribute towards having a forward-sold position of 89% for the full year.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

One of the real things that has helped us maintain momentum is our proximity to our partners and our proximity to Homes England as a strategic partner within their program of delivery. We're the only listed house builder who is a strategic partner. We're one of 32. That gives us proximity to partners, proximity to partners' capacity to be selective and continue to work and deliver. When you look at all of our contracted position today, and this does include those schemes that are in the defects period, we're actually in contract on nearly 58,000 homes. That's a very, very significant number. That scale is important. As you can see from that map, we have managed to transact across all regions. We're not having any regions where we are not very busy. This graphic here gives some sense of that scale and our market position in the partnership space.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

You can see there that we are five times, we're the only scalable national partnerships business, five times the size of Keepmoat's output. This is affordable homes in a 12-month period. You can see the relative market position. That's really important because that allows us to work with our partners in an effective way in planning future developments. It also has allowed us to quickly deploy funding as we receive it from the government. We've already received an allocation from the government following the autumn statement last year, £20 million. That's been immediately deployed, immediately put onto site, immediately into contract with partners, generating new homes, generating employment, and achieving exactly what the government wanted to achieve. What we find is that early engagement with partners has helped us avoid having Section 106 problems. Unlike others, we're not going through clearing to place our Section 106s.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

We're able to work with our partners, put our Section 106 homes that are required under the planning system alongside the additionality that comes by applying grant, and that allows us to deliver and continue to deliver as a result of working with partners. Those assets of having framework relationships with our partners, of an unrivaled position in terms of proximity to grant, and our knowledge of the right product in the right place, and having upstream conversations allows us to have the sort of testimonials that you can see on the right-hand side of that slide, which again is a circular contributes to our position. Despite the headwinds in the market, we're managing to maintain that momentum. As a mixed-tenure partnerships business, open market sales are obviously a key part of our business, absolutely fundamental. We've been focusing on self-help during this period.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

How can we improve our sales activity? We've invested in a number of ways. You'll remember last time I talked about us introducing a contact center. This is the first point of contact for our customers. They leave a digital signature. They are contacted within 24 hours, many of them within four hours, to have a discussion about what sort of home they're looking for. We've got an internal in-house contact center, and that is now operational across the business. We've introduced training programs across the whole business, and that is now actively supporting the level of inquiries and the level of work that we're doing with our partners. We've reviewed our customers, and we've reviewed our enablers. We already sell a good number of shared equity homes. We already use all of the enablers that you'll see on our web page.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

We've also introduced a key worker enabler, and we are in negotiations on a further shared equity product that we hope to bring to market over the next few months as well. This is really helpful in us engaging with customers during a period where affordability is difficult. We've seen more mixed-tenure sites coming through that have been designed as partnership sites. That is important in terms of the product mix and ensuring that we have that differentiation. Importantly, I hope within the next few months, some of you will be able to get out to our sites to have a look at our brand refresh. There's some excellent work that has taken place in looking at creating more brand definition between Bovis, Linden, and Countryside. We've got Countryside Homes. We've got more brand differentiation. That will allow us to have incremental pricing points across a whole range of homes.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

That will certainly support us in our future sales. As Greg said, this is an unprecedented environment for us to be working in. We've seen an unprecedented government commitment to delivering homes. As somebody said, it's a bazooka. It's an absolute huge impact on the marketplace. Why is it unprecedented? Let's deal with those two boxes on the outside for a moment. Firstly, never before has a government provided bridge finance. We asked for it as a sector. We said, you're moving from one affordable homes program to another. We need some form of bridge finance. The government, on an unprecedented basis, brought forward the Chancellor announced £2 billion to bridge that gap. Never before have we seen that level of funding into affordable housing, £39 billion over 10 years. That's a 69% increase year on year. Most importantly, it's a 10-year commitment. That is unprecedented.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

We've only seen five-year commitments previously. What we've now got is a view for a sensible, sustainable delivery program that we can engage our partners with and deliver. That supports a whole range of aspects for our business. Also unprecedented is the announcement of the Housing Bank and the creation of the public financial institution. Homes England already offer and have a very successful investment team, an investment division that is contributing and provides a range of products, guarantees, loans, and equity placed into the market. What the National Housing Bank will do is devolve powers to Homes England so that they're able to implement those initiatives, engage with the sector, and support further leverage coming into the sector to deliver the homes. It is expected that that will deliver significantly, 60,000 homes over the course of this Parliament. Those are the two significant demand side elements. It is transformational.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

That's where the central box here comes into play. It's transformational in terms of its impact on the capacity of partners. That combination of a 10-year rent settlement, so partners could put their rents up by CPI plus one over the next 10 years, together with rent convergence being implemented, is really important. I'll just explain what we mean by rent convergence. It's quite possible for three homes to be sat next to one another. Imagine a terrace of three homes. The home on the left is vacant. It's about to be let. It will be let at £105. Next to that is a home which is currently let, has been let for, say, five years at £100. On the right-hand side is a home that is let, has been occupied for 15 years. That might be at £80 rent.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

What rent convergence allows housing associations and local authorities to do is incrementally, by charging either an extra pound, an extra two pounds, or an extra three pounds—the government is out for consultation on that—increase the rents each week or increase the rents each year, but obviously the impact is each week, so that they reach this common level. The impact of that, if you were to take that over a 10-year period, at two pounds, the expectation is that 87% of homes will have reached convergence within that period. It puts back into the sector a considerable amount of capacity. That then contributes towards the ability of restoring capacity amongst our local authority and housing association partners, incrementally reinforcing their spending power. A key measure for housing associations, particularly, but also local authorities, is interest rate cover.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

It's a key measure, a key metric for the regulator, and it's a key measure for the credit agencies and to some extent their lenders. Therefore, it is the thing that drives a lot of capacity within the sector. Now, the combined impact of the rent settlement, rent convergence, and access to building safety fund supports a growth in that from a median of 102% today over that period to 137% on a basis of a £2 a week rent convergence. It's a bit technical, this. This is great work that's been done by Savills and the Chartered Institute of Housing, but it demonstrates how there is an improving position across the sector. It's important to recognize this is sectoral. I know some of you like to look at the sector as a whole. From a Vistry perspective, of course, this is not a homogenous group of partners.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Some of the partners we work with currently have interest rate cover 70%, 80%. Some of our partners have interest rate cover north of 150%. It is very different across the country in different parts. It's particularly difficult in London, and that's why in London, rent convergence will disproportionately have a significant impact and will really put additional power into London housing associations. In fact, one of the CEOs of a London housing association came up with that phrase there, saying it was an absolute game changer. The £39 billion is great. CPI plus one for 10 years is great, but rent convergence, when you've got really significant, historically different rents, makes a huge difference. That is a key element of that contributing towards capacity. How does that capacity get converted? I'm thankful to Savills and Chartered Institute of Housing for doing some analysis here.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

This graphic combines housing associations and local authorities. You can see quickly, visually there, the difference between increasing rents at the rate of £1 a week to £2 to £3. Let's take that middle assumption of £2 that could contribute, depending upon your assumptions of how that is deployed, between 43,000 and 60,000 additional homes. When I say depending upon your assumptions, it depends upon the extent to which that additional capacity is spent on new build supply rather than on investing in your existing stock. Savills and CIH understandably have taken a reasonably sensible and conservative view in terms of how much of that would contribute to new supply. Those others, that's the sort of range that you get. Here's the rub of this. That has a disproportionate impact in the near term. That's a seven-year graphic.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

If you're increasing your rents and you know you're going to increase your rents, you have the ability to borrow against that. You have the ability to translate into new delivery. That's why we can see that will start to come through fairly quickly during that first seven-year period. For local authorities, some, not all, it will be a game changer for them because they will move from business plans that are in deficit to business plans that are in surplus. We've got two or three situations across the country now where local authorities are saying to us, we would like to talk to you about us giving you an offer for your affordable housing. You were going to go down that route with a registered provider. We'd like to talk to you directly and see if you'd work with us.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

There is clearly a sense in which that is coming through already. That capacity conversion is really importantly on top of the current spend for housing associations. The current spend, despite the headwinds, the regulator reported £14 billion being spent this year on new supply by registered providers. £14 billion. A lot of that is committed. I think just over four of it is not or wasn't in at the end of June. A significant amount of that is committed, but that gives you a sense of the scale. This is on top of that current expenditure. How does that follow through to an overview of the market? What can we expect? Translating that policy to funding and what's importantly, the timeline.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

If you take into account that additional grant program, if you take into account the additional capacity that I've just explained, and you take into account political expectation, which is not listed on that slide, but is incredibly important, and you take into account the additional homes that are almost inevitably going to come through Section 106, I think you can see our market space grow from an average across the country of 55,000 affordable homes a year. If you look at the long-term run rate, that's about what it is, to 70,000 to 75,000 homes, affordable homes delivered each year. Still nowhere near enough, still nowhere near enough to satisfy demand. We can look at the requirements for 90,000 social homes being social rented homes needed a year, let alone affordable homes as a whole.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

That unfortunately does not tap into the full demand, but that gives a sense of a growing market and the opportunity that sits behind it. That needs all of those levers to be working, but that will start to deliver an increased market size. The timeline set out there, the bit on the left, you don't need to concentrate out the rearview mirror. The important thing here is looking forward. We would have hoped, we haven't got it today, but we would hope that we'll know the outcome this month, possibly this week, for a bit of further bid that we put into Homes England for part of that, the first allocations under that £2 billion bridge. We're very hopeful that we will get that. We will be able to deploy that very quickly to start working with partners during the second half of the year.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

That will really allow us to also have that conversation with partners about program delivery as we go into the prospectus. We expect the prospectus to be issued by Homes England in October. That's not just important for us bidding for our own program. That's important for our partners who are bidding. Because don't forget, whilst it's great we're a strategic partner and we gain grant directly, we work with partners who have their own grant to deploy. There's the ability for us to deploy both and to be working with partners on delivery on both. That prospectus we expect to come out in October with bids submitted by the end of year, with allocations in March 2026. That will really give us a burst as we go into 2026.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

We're already talking about funding frameworks, which I'll come on to again in a moment, with partners, but this will certainly support us in lifting what we're doing in 2026 even further, which is great news. What's the impact for Vistry? In the near term, as I've said there, we're already seeing increased partner appetite in expectation of stepping up to deliver the government's agenda and in the response to the additional capacity that they can see coming down the line. It isn't uniform. It's absolutely key that you are working with partners who have that capacity. We expect to be able to continue to deploy grant very quickly. We have a considerable number of plots that we've identified that have consent and will deliver starts before March 2026. We're very keen to be deploying grant on those and working with our partners.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

We have very well cited, because of our performance as a strategic partner, on our expectations of being successful in a future bid for the prospectus over the next 10 years. That's really important. If we have a 10-year program, and I don't yet know what's in the prospectus, but if there's an opportunity for us to not only receive funding during a five-year period, but to have some confidence over a 10-year period, that will really support longer-term regeneration projects. It will really support what's happening in London with long-term gestation, working with the GLA as well. We would hope through our delivery program in the medium term that we'll be able to secure even more funds and put our strategic assets into play. A key element there is it gives us certainty, it gives us forward visibility for our manufacturing facility.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

It gives us the ability to be cost-efficient in our transactions with partners by working within frameworks. It also allows us to continue over the medium term. We would expect to work even more with government on placemaking and delivering at pace. A great example of that, we were able to announce this week, is the formation of Hestia, an investment joint venture with Homes England, where we're jointly committing £150 million of equity in a structure that allows for that to be leveraged. Do not take £150 million and divide it by plot values. That is a leveraged vehicle. That will allow us to support delivery fairly quickly. It will allow us, because of the scale of it, to work with SMEs. We want to use it as a platform for diversifying the sector.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

In fact, I think Adam said to me, since we made the announcement, we've had a number of contacts, not where Adam is, we've had a number of contacts asking us if they would like to introduce themselves to us to work with us. Great. The rationale for us is relatively straightforward. It's set out there. Key to this is if you're the largest leading partner in this sector, you not only have an opportunity, you have a responsibility. It's that fusion of opportunity and responsibility which will drive what we want to achieve with Hestia, working with Homes England as our joint venture partner. We already expect to submit to the board for consideration opportunities that will deliver starts and some completions in 2026. It's not our only joint venture. We're working with others already on frameworks.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

We're in advanced stages of negotiations on a number of frameworks, multi-site deals that will allow us to work on a successive basis, investing in supply. One of those, importantly, is with institutional finance. We expect that to be able to drive delivery of thousands of homes within London. That will be really important. We hope that we'll be able to announce that before too long. In summary then, a unique and compelling opportunity for a partnerships business in this space. We have never had an environment that is as positive as it is now. Since our pivot to a full partnerships business, we have not had the best conditions to thrive as a partnerships business, but we've been successful.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Going forward, using our strategic assets, our relationship with our partners, our manufacturing capacity, our proximity to Homes England, and our commitment to deliver responsibly puts us in an absolute fantastic position to generate more homes and support earnings growth going forward. Over to Greg.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Thanks, Stephen. Incredibly compelling is how I would summarise that. Operational update then. The group strategy is ideally placed to maximize a significant affordable housing strategy. The near-term market for the open market sales remains constrained, with we don't see any particular catalyst that's going to make that better.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

If you just take those two points and you go back to September 2023 when we announced our new strategy, if somebody would have said the new government's going to come in and announce £39 billion, bring forward £2 billion, you're going to be signing a joint venture with Homes England, basically the government, I would have said, no, I'm not that bullish. You know, what thing to come through following on from that strategy. It's absolutely fundamental and it underlines the move we've made, whether it's from a private housing side or where the market is going, which is very much partnerships. We expect to see, and this is important, we are seeing already, as Stephen said, stronger growth in the affordable delivery in the near term, resulting in a higher percentage of partner funding going forward. We originally said in the strategy, 65-35, 65% partner, 35% open market.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

We haven't achieved that in 2023 nor 2024, nor will we in 2025. We think going forward, it probably will stay. We'll amend our strategy to be more like 75-25, even potentially 80-20. Importantly, of that partner-funded area, we are expecting to see a drop-off in the PRS. We'll still do PRS, but it will be less because the affordable market and the amount of funding coming through and the activity levels we're already seeing are getting stronger. The partner-funded will come more from affordable than from PRS going forward. The group's current land buying and development pipeline reflects these near-term expectations and completely underpins our robust thought, our robust statement on 40% return on capital and a 12% operating margin, with our focus on land values, which we're seeing, higher affordable ASPs, build cost efficiency, and capital release.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

First of all, I'm not sure that's the best photograph for me, but you can tell it's a recent one because, as you can imagine, October, November, December, January, February, March, April this year, there wasn't too much smiling going on. There's been an enormous amount of work done in this organization, and I'm pleased to say we're through that. There's smiles back on people's faces, and we can all now see the opportunity, and we're looking forward rather than looking back. An important point to say: the Senior Management Team now, which has completely changed, are all partnerships people. There are no housebuilding people at that level. The Executive Chairs all sit on the individual, on the ELT, sorry. Individual reviews with me and other members of the ELT are taking place on a quarterly basis with every Business Unit Board. The South Division, sorry, is completely now restructured.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Tim talked about the increase in overhead, so title controls and insurance is now bedded in. We have an Investment Committee, which looks at all land opportunities in a much more organized way than before. All financing, pleased to say, reports through to Tim. A new Group Assurance Commercial Team has been established, which reviews all of our CVR monthly reporting. We've got a system enhancement, which tracks what we call life aside, all in place. An enormous amount of work has been done over the last 12 months. Talking about land, activity levels in the land market have stepped up over the last couple of months. As you would have seen from the statement, 3,000 or just over 3,000 plots secured in the first half. We've secured 3,000 plots in the first two months of the second half.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Would you believe we've got 20,000 plots at the moment with terms agreed? Securing larger mixed-tenure sites, which form the backbone of our delivery, is going to be where we are going forward, particularly, and there's a good example on the right-hand side there, which we announced, the Rugeley power station, or previous Rugeley power station. Land acquisitions with 100% pre-sale are increasingly attractive given the market backdrop. That's where we buy the land and flip it immediately to a local authority or a housing association for a decent margin, not using any cash. In fact, it's generating cash all the way through. The framework deal that Stephen's just talked about, Hestia, we won't make a more important individual announcement on for the next five years. That is absolutely huge. A joint venture with the government, government putting its trust in Vistry.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Of course, we're already getting lots of phone calls, not just from SMEs, as Stephen said, from local authorities and housing associations, should we be doing the same? The framework that Stephen made note to at the end of his presentation regarding London, a framework that deal was actually signed last night. That should be bringing thousands of homes into the capital. We've got London, which is the GLA, of course, and Homes England pretty much covered. Vistry Works. This is fundamentally important to us. Our investment capacity from our three factories has the ability to construct 10,000 units per year. In addition, we're already manufacturing a good number of floor joists, cassettes, and roof trusses. We're on track to deliver 4,500 timber frame units this year. We expect that to rise to over 6,000 next year.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

We've just launched in the last month a new timber frame installer apprenticeship program because there is a lot of work going to be coming out from this, and frankly, there isn't enough people to do it at the present moment in time. That's important. One of the most important bits of this entire presentation is the MauBrick cladding solution, which you can see there. This is at our East Midlands factory. First thing to say is that is 3D computer-generated brick cladding. That whole thing was built there, those two semi-detached houses, to watertight shell in two weeks. Because we are a partnerships business, 50% less carbon than brick. If Mr. and Mrs. Smith are buying an individual home, don't really go into that. Housing associations, Homes England, grant funding, etc., etc., this is a huge, huge player for us going forward.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

So much so, we're going to be the first of any of the other house builders that are actually going to be starting on site within the next month in Yorkshire, building four of these homes with this computer-generated brick for a very, very large housing association, having now just got LABC warranty approval. This is huge for us again in this particular sector and will massively reduce our reliance on subcontractors, particularly bricklayers. We expect to launch 10 more sites using this system during the course of 2026. Of course, timber frame, this sort of thing only works if you've got certainty. If you're a pure house builder, it's all very good and you've got a big scheme of 1,000 homes.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

If you don't know if you're going to sell them all and you don't know what the rate of sale is going to be, that factory is still going to be there and it's still going to be producing and still costing you. If you're Vistry and you've got 1,000 units and we're just going to build them, it really does come into itself because we've got the certainty of it. Therefore, we can actually get the benefits of those premium savings through. Current trading. As I've said, we're very confident of delivering a year-on-year increase in profits for full year 2025, as we've been throughout the year. Of this, 89% of the partner-funded sales for 2025 are forward sold. We've got a strong pipeline of partner-funded H2 deals to be completed, which more than covers the balance.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

We're currently looking at more than we actually need and we're actually looking at which ones we want to do as opposed to last year trying to find and feather our way through to the period end. We're in a pretty comfortable position on that front. The injection of grant funding for affordable homes, particularly the likes of Hestia and joint ventures, will also support this delivery in the second half of the year. Sales and marketing, it's a tough, challenging market. I wouldn't say it's a disaster. It's at the bottom end of satisfactory, but we're doing all we can to generate sales and sales through the summer held up relatively well from a relatively low level, I must say. The group's focus on cash performance, including the management of work in progress, has been transformed and we are expecting a dramatic reduction in debt at the year end.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

I'm going to just finish and put it into my own words, the same slide that Stephen went through. Without doubt, we have a clear market-leading position. We're five times bigger than any of our competitors and can scale up on that with, for instance, our timber frame MauBrick capability. Unprecedented government commitments to housing funding. Stephen and I have been around for over 40 years in this industry and we've never seen anything like it. Don't underestimate the pressure the government are putting on housing associations, saying, "We've given you what you want with your rent settlement, your convergence, your access to the building safety fund. You best be getting on with giving us what we want, and that is getting on with building homes, particularly for affordable rent," which is actually happening in front of us.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

That step-changing partner capacity, I don't think can be, and I think it has been, maybe by you guys, underestimated in the, it's not just the £39 billion, it's all about this, tenure rent settlement, access to the building safety, and convergence. Convergence is huge. I've had it a number of times from chief execs of housing associations. That's just as important to them as the £39 billion. Please do not underestimate that. That will, of course, add all that together, drive our earnings going forward. We've got our numbers for 2026. I think consensus for, sorry, for 2025, consensus for 2026, sees us going up by over 20%. The real step up after that will come in 2027 as we start seeing this funding program starting to materialize, which it is in front of our eyes at the moment. On that bullish front, we will take any questions.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

We'll do from the floor first and then we'll go onto the actual television, as it were. Do you want to start as the nearest one with Will?

[Will Jones, Equity Analyst - Construction & Building Materials at Rothschild & Co Redburn]

Thanks, Will Jones from Redburn. Just a few, I think, reasonably high level, but first one just around that change in mix of sales, potentially the 35% open market becoming 25%. How do we square that, I suppose, with an unchanged longer-term operating margin view? I think the open market elements were, at least on the gross margin, doing a relatively higher number.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

We're starting to see an uptick in the partner-funded margin, particularly with the greater amount we're doing in the affordable space as opposed to the PRS space. All I can say on that is the land we've been buying pretty much since the start of this year throws off that margin. A reduction, better prelims, because you're building out quicker and less reliance on the open market, better subcontract prices as well.

[Will Jones, Equity Analyst - Construction & Building Materials at Rothschild & Co Redburn]

Thanks. On that move as well from more additional and therefore less PRS, is that really about the positivity of the additional, or do you think that the PRS market in its own right might become tougher in terms of terms?

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

No, I think the PRS market is there. It's needed. It's still operating. We're working with more PRS providers this year than we did last year, but a lot of them are going through their own funding, trying to get increases in funding. Their existing funding has finished, to speak. I think it's more to do with the amount of activity we're seeing from housing associations and local authorities at this precise moment in time. They're all being pushed by the government. They've all got these benefits, rent settlements they keep going on about, and they're all looking to get ahead of the game with regards to the £37 billion program for the next 10 years. As Stephen said, the £2 billion, you know, we're expecting a very good grant, which we should hear in the next few days, as will our partners.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

They're already looking to spend that money, and they'll spend that money in the second half of this year going into next year. The activity levels, you know, from September 2023, when we announced our strategy, we knew, absolutely knew that we'd pretty much come to the end of the 2021-2026 affordable housing program. Pretty much all the money was spent. We knew that. We were happy with that. The change in strategy was for Labour getting into power and hopefully them coming up with something along the lines of we never thought it would be £39 billion. We have for the last 18 months been scrabbling around trying to use our relationships and find money with housing associations, pretty much where they'd already spent it. We've done incredibly well with that. 2024 was very, very strong with PRS. 2025 is less strong with PRS.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

We think it will be less strong going forward. Now our land teams and our affordable housing teams are now back to normal insofar as they're dealing with a new program. I would very much hope that we will spend the biggest part of the £39 billion or whatever it relates to the first five years of that in the next three years, as it always has been with the 2021-2026 and the program before that. It's the uptick in affordable housing providers' appetite, which is making it harder for PRS at the same time as PRS have got their own issues with funding as well.

[Will Jones, Equity Analyst - Construction & Building Materials at Rothschild & Co Redburn]

Thanks. The last one you mentioned, the importance of political expectations. I just wondered in your conversations with Homes England and government, what are you saying to them you can do medium term around growth, and are their expectations of you realistic in the context of delivering that comfortably from your side?

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Okay, I'll pass that to Stephen because I used to be. Stephen is seeing Stephen Teagle tomorrow, to talk about all of that. Maybe you do that. I used to be called him, but I'm yesterday's man now. Stephen's the face of the business now. Go on, Stephen.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

We've been very open with Homes England about what we can provide and how quickly we can provide, which I think is a substance to your question. We've shared with Homes England the quantity that we could provide over the next six to nine months in terms of site starts. We're able to annotate that between schemes that we would do with partners directly, so they've already got their own funding, and those that we would be seeking funding for to deliver ourselves. As you can imagine, we're talking thousands of homes that we're able to, consented sites, consented plots, consented sites that we are able to put into delivery by March 2026 and throughout 2026 as well. We've got that forward visibility of a program to deliver. Our program currently with Homes England is in excess of 3,000 homes, so that's what we've been delivering previously.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

What we're hopeful of is that when the prospectus is issued in October, this longer-term five and ten-year position will become clearer, not just for us, but for all bidders, so that we can be looking at a longer-term delivery which will really support that. We're very open and Homes England are very aware of what we can deliver as are many of our partners.

[Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

Thank you. Morning, Chris Millington at Deutsche Bank. First one, Stephen, I wonder if you can help us on how the £37 billion is going to land in timing. I think we've all struggled to understand the ramp-up of that. That's the first one, and perhaps when you think the cash will start flowing there. Next one, I think maybe for Tim, is the phasing of these low margin sites. Perhaps you could just put some numbers around that so we can understand the roll-off of that. The last one's really about WIP release. You mentioned, Greg, that you expect a decent amount of WIP release by year-end. Perhaps you can give some detail. I'm going to throw in one last cheeky one. You mentioned about Labour being in power, about the sort of genesis for the change. They're not polling particularly well now.

[Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

If we look forward three years, would that necessitate a change, or do you think we're kind of on a road to affordable delivery regardless of government now?

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

I think we're on the numbers. We're nearly spending £3 billion a year of taxpayers' money on temporary housing. I think the numbers, this isn't Labour going down a road because they feel like it. This is Labour going down a road. We've got an affordable housing crisis. I think once it's in place, you never know. I completely agree with regards to the polling and everything else. Some of the WhatsApps I'm getting at the moment, you couldn't possibly forward. I would say that, yeah, I think a new government would find it, if that was to happen, incredibly difficult looking at the numbers and the need to change things around, particularly once it's in place. Stephen, do you want to, the £37 billion?

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Yeah, no, on that point, I would just say that you don't, if you look back historically, there have been as many affordable homes being delivered under a Conservative government as under a Labour government, in actual fact. The £39 billion, and when it's deployed, I wish I could give you the exact answer. It's a judgment, isn't it, for all of us? I've seen analyses where people have said, the Chancellor said £4 billion in 2029. If you cast forward with inflation and ease up the £39 billion and then cast back to next year, it's going to have a two in front of it. I don't buy that. I just simply do not agree with that. That doesn't resonate with any of the discussions that I've had with government or civil service either.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

You would be more accurate in drawing a straight line across £39 billion over 10 years, again, that won't be right, of course. My view is that there is absolutely no way that the government is going to see a dip in capital funding and grant funding, which would then moderate the market. They're going to want to grow from the position. I would work on an extrapolation from a figure of £3.3 billion and cascade the £39 billion over 10 years from that point. That's what I would do. That's my assumption. There are two other things to say. The first is we are dealing with something that is very opaque because what's happening in terms of the output, output and funding do not exactly marry. It's opaque because some of the output this year is coming from a program from 2015 to 2021.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Some of the output this year is not just in the 2021-2026 program. What you've got is layered programs contributing to output in individual years. It's very difficult to take that simple exercise and extrapolate that across. I think that's the bit that we tend, you know, it's tempting to do that, but I think that isn't the true position. The true position is people are committing to an uptick in delivery, and you'll see that cascade across.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

And Tim?

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

I was doing some analysis just on the low margin sites in the first half of the year. Roughly, I would expect about 20% of those sites that were low margin in the first half of the year to complete in the second half of this year. Then something like 30% of them will go during the course of the following year, and the remaining 50% will be skewed more towards the front end of 2027 and 2028, but will disappear over time. There will be some tail going out to sort of 2029 and 2030.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

What proportion of the total are those low margin?

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

I would say it's something around a third of the first half year.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Okay, Chris.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Thanks.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

I've just got three, actually. Just interested, obviously, just coming out of summer, but your thoughts on the autumn selling season, a bit more color around kind of open market sales, and how you expect that to trend into the autumn. The second question, just obviously still got quite a lot to do in terms of build and output in the second half, how that feeds through to average net debt. Any guidance there, Tim, on reported end-of-year net debt and average net debt for the full year? Just on planning, again, interested to hear your thoughts, how that's easing, are you seeing that better on the ground yet? Is it just easier? Lots of the other house builders talk about frustrations, it's slow to come through. Is it just easier for affordable homes, how that kind of dynamic plays out? Thanks. Okay.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Do you want to take the question for you, Tim?

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Yeah, so in terms of the debt, our reported position at the end of the year is as it was. We expect it to be high double digit, that sort of level of net debt, so a significant reduction year on year end. The profile within the second half of the year means that the income is slightly more aggressive, getting a call coming through.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

No, it's Stephen himself. He's making sure he's being recorded for all the good stuff he's saying.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Back to average debt. The average debt in the second half will be dependent on the profile, particularly the timing of the partner deals, which tend to be more year-end loaded or Q4 loaded. We always see the second half average net debt slightly higher than the average in the first half because of the work in progress build-up during Q3 with the income in Q4. I'd expect the second half average to be slightly higher than the first half average. Putting up some numbers around that, first half average was £695 million. We'd probably see the second half the other side of £700 million. Full year may be slightly above £700 million.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Okay, with the planning bit, you know, strategic land, getting strategic land through is just far more straightforward, in fact, than it's probably ever been in my time. When you actually then get down into the local planning environment, you know, some local authorities are listening to what the government is saying. We want a presumption to build as opposed to a presumption not to build, but not all. Funnily enough, not all of the ones that don't are Conservative. Some of them are still Labour councils. Definitely, there is a trend that we're getting planning through, even at local level, quicker than before. It's still not easy. There's still more work to do on it.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

We could never put a number on it, but turning up for a meeting with the planners and leaders of councils with a housing association or even Homes England next year, saying this is much needed with their own housing officers in the room, it's got to be more straightforward than just turning up as a pure house builder. I think it's more straightforward, but still difficult for us at a local level. At a high level, from a strategic land, it is definitely more straightforward. We're seeing more land allocated. Let's not forget, we do have, you know, circa 70,000 lots in our strategic land bank still to, still to come through. Stephen, do you want to just talk about the sales through the summer and what we're expecting?

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Yeah, okay, so in terms of sales, I think you described the market as the sort of lower end of satisfactory, wouldn't you? In terms of it being constrained by affordability, interest rates coming down has helped, but affordability remains a real constraint on the market. The use of enablers is really important to us. About 22% of our sales involve a form of enabler. That includes shared ownership and includes a deposit assist. As I said earlier, hopefully that will be supported by key workers. There's a range of things that we're using in order to propel those sales. The market remains constrained by affordability, and it's very similar, as you will have heard from the other house builders, in terms of what we need as an injection into the marketplace.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

I particularly favor a form of do-it-yourself shared ownership as a product that could be used across the whole industry to support sales for first-time buyers particularly. I think if we saw that, that would be a really positive step.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Our forecast for the year, I mean, we've just continued what we did in July and August, even though September and first half of October, because we'll be pulling up stumps on private sales, middle of October, week 42. We've assumed pretty much the same run as we've had during the summer period. We went into the summer period with below satisfactory. Funnily enough, in my experience, when you haven't got a very good market, you don't get those seasonal variances because people are buying because they need to buy. Whether it's July or whether it's April doesn't really matter. I'm pleased to say for what it's worth that July and August didn't, we didn't really see a drop-off that you would normally see in a more stronger market. It was okay. We're not assuming the next six weeks are a huge uptick within our year-end forecast, anything but.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Thanks, Louis Roxburgh, Goodbody, two questions, please. Just on the pickup in the partnerships activity coming through in the second half, just interested as to whether you're starting to see that now with the June spend and review ahead of us. Are you expecting more in the last quarter with the budget and top-up affordable coming through? Maybe some color on the other drivers there and whether the sort of H2 swing is a one-off in partnerships or more structural. The second question is a little bit long-term and philosophical. Just your view on your long-term outlook of your place in the affordable market. You know, at the moment, you're obviously a clear leader, but given the supply stimulus, the grant funding, the rent settlement, and conversion, the other pieces you mentioned, do you expect the bidden environment to become more aggressive?

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

I guess, how do you aim to keep that position and match that scale? I guess it amounts to how do you balance growth with maintaining those sort of quality margins and risk frameworks? Thanks.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

I'll take the latter one, Stephen will obviously take where we are with affordable. If you read a lot of the analyst notes out there, despite what Stephen's just said, this isn't a compelling opportunity. Why would other house builders want to come into this? As far as I'm concerned, no brainer of a sector. The facts are, we fully expect, and they are, other house builders have bid to be a strategic partner. We're 100% aware of it. They haven't got there yet. That doesn't mean they won't going forward. We'll be very happy maintaining our market share as opposed to growing it going forward. That's what our numbers assume. We couldn't possibly do it all. There will have to be some other national entries into the space. We would welcome that.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

We do feel a little bit alienated in the house building market at the moment whereby models are all based on house building. We're not house building. We're partnerships. It's very, very difficult. The more house builders that come into this, and I think one or two probably will at the end of the day, it'll make it more compelling that you guys, if I can use that expression, maybe have to change your modeling and outlook a little bit. Stephen, on the first point.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Yeah, I think your question was about affordable activity over the next six months. There are two or three things that are driving that. The first is the commitments that housing associations, registered providers, and some local authorities have already made to delivery. We have a pipeline of over 100 deals where we have a partner identified, and we are moving forward with heads of terms ready to bring those forward to conclusion to convert. In addition to that, partners are receiving top-up funding. I mentioned our top-up funding. It's not just us. Partners, not all of them are strategic partners. As I said, only 30 or so are strategic partners. Some of them have to bid for funds on a scheme-by-scheme basis. They'll be putting up an opportunity in Swindon or Middlesbrough, and they will be seeking grant funding confirmation within a four or six-week period to then proceed.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Top-up funding is being deployed in that way in this second half. There is also an element in that partners still have funds that they haven't deployed within the existing program. Some of that may be taken from them and redeployed where it can be delivered. That goes to the earlier question. We've got opportunities to deliver it, but some of it may just be that those partners have only just got planning and they're able to go forward. The third thing that we're seeing, which is very positive for next year, is we're seeing partners wanting to, as Greg said, commit now with a view to that it's going to give them a head start in delivery into the new program. We're discussing a number of schemes with partners, and we have converted a number of schemes with partners which are designed for delivery over the next year.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

All of that is giving us impetus in this second half. Will there be even more momentum in 2026, Q1, and Q2? Absolutely. We're seeing considerable momentum now in terms of moving towards the end of this year as people want to get ahead and also spend that money.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

We've also seen since probably June, before June, the program is not sure what that's about. The program is spent, and we've spent all of our grant since June. We're absolutely noticing what I would call the local authority roadworks. You know, when you get to February and March, an awful lot of roadwork seems to take place as they're out there spending that money. Local authorities, housing associations are in the same place. Actually, we haven't spent it all, or actually we've just been let down on this particular scheme over there. We are benefiting a little bit now, which we can see for our year-end with housing associations realizing, for whatever reason, they've got some money to spend because nobody, including Vistry, wants to not spend their '21-'26 program because that will impact.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

They will give the housing, Homes England will give the money to the best performers, particularly with this government where they're absolutely focused on delivery, delivery, delivery. If, you know, where are we, Stephen, in the 32 strategic partners?

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

I'll say top decile, don't say that.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

The money will go to those that perform, and less will go to those that don't. Everyone is desperate to make sure they're in a good position to get the benefit of this £37 billion. Clyde?

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Thank you, Clyde Lewis, that's appealing. I think I've got four, apologies. Vistry Works, you have talked about a further plant in the past. What are your thoughts around that at the moment?

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

We've got 10,000 capacity. We're looking at just over six, well, between six and seven for next year. I would say we're going to go into probably 2027, but we will still need a full factory by 2027.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Thank you. London, a couple of times has come up as being the worst market. It's a fairly consistent message across the whole sector. Do you think the GLA and the Mayor are doing enough at the moment to sort things out here? I mean, obviously the building safety regulators probably cause more of a bottleneck here, but interested to hear your comments as to how quickly do you think London may get back to a more normal?

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Do you want to take the steam? We've signed a big framework last night, which will help. Go on, Stephen.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

I think it's not just the Mayor. I think there's a sector-wide and the government and the mayoral responsibility for delivery weighs on us all. I mean, we absolutely have a disastrous problem in London in terms of supply. In 2023-2024, I did some analysis that showed that Vistry was responsible for something like 46% of all the affordable housing starts in that year. That had come down from 20-odd thousand down to about three. It was a huge fall, but it just shows the scale of the challenge that exists in London for supply. The GLA will be allocated some of that £39 billion, and you know how that's been, that will play out. We will start to see what that allocation is as part of the prospectus when it's issued in October. Homes England only operate outside London. GLA are responsible within London.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

We are actively talking to the GLA about initiatives to bring future grant to bear. The problem that has been in London, as I've mentioned in the slides, has been the capacity of partners. There has not been the number of housing associations available to transact, even if the grant had been there, because of the headwinds they've got in investing in their stock. What I'd expect to happen is that registered providers, as they grow that capacity, will now be able to step up. I think you will see a change over the next 12 months. Most schemes in London have a longer gestation period, and they're not going to deliver completions in the lifetime of this government as quickly as the government will want.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

If I was the government spending a pound and wanting a completion, you're going to get it more quickly outside London than in London generally. That needs to be factored in in how that's deployed. We've developed the initiative that Greg's mentioned that will allow us to work with essentially a for-profit registered provider and institutional finance to deliver capacity into London. That will help us deliver. A lot of our work in London recently has been with local authorities and some PRS providers, but a lot of it has been with local authorities. I think it's got to change. It's not going to change immediately, but I think over the next 12 months you will see that capacity start to return.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

We have three business units in London. We had three business units 18 months ago. We did the restructure. There's still three business units, not because of what was going to happen in the last 18 months. Without doubt, London's got the acutest affordable housing issue in the country at some point. You know, that has got to change. It is at pretty much a breaking point. Am I not right, Stephen, that local authorities in London are spending £4 million a day on hotels? I mean, it's huge sums of money. It's got to change. We're, you know, we've deliberately kept three strong businesses in London to capitalize on that.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Okay, thank you. Third one was on the housing association or the RP sort of interest cover chart that you put out, which is fascinating to see. Obviously the rent conversion is driving the revenue.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Yeah.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

What's happening on their funding costs? Because it's hard for us to see it, but you know, that's the other side of that equation.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

That is another headwind. Absolutely. I mean, I think housing associations are faced with an increase in their borrowing costs as well, and that factors into their viabilities. That has also been a constraint on capacity. It's not just been spending it on stock, but that has been taken into account. Those projections that Savills did, and the CIH have done, they've taken into assumptions on a mix of affordable housing, so social rent as well as affordable and shared ownership on the mix that we expect in the prospectus. They factored in the cost of funds into housing associations. 55% of the housing association debt is long term. It's already there at the historic interest rates, and there's uncommitted facilities within that housing associations have as well. They've got debt, they're very strong.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

They've got strong liquidity at the moment, but they have factored in that extra cost of borrowing in those assumptions that we've seen in the interest rate projections.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

The last one, I suppose, was around the guidance for the full year and the unchanged view on it. You've talked about, again, a big pipeline. If there's a best and a worst case outcome, how wide could that be for this year, I suppose, in particular? What are the, you know, if everything drops, clearly you're going to get to the top. If you don't get to the top, what are the reasons why, I suppose, for not getting there?

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

As I said in the presentation, we've got more offers on more opportunities than we are forecasting for the year. A disaster can always happen. We absolutely can't see that happening. I feel much happier that these offers are from housing associations who are people we've been working with for years and years and years. Once they basically say they'll do it, they will. A PRS provider is not adverse to a little chip or something at the end of the day. A housing association, pretty straight. That's the offer. That's what we're going to do. That's what the timelines we'll do it in. I think the quality of the offers that we've got on more than enough for the year end are important. With regards to the GOV, I don't see the benefit of making too much more than guidance. I would rather it go into the following year.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

I'm very confident, Satia, we all are, including Tim, of getting to the numbers that are out there for this year when we look at the facts, as are our 25 business units. We're confident of that. You would want a small beat, but I don't think we would be looking for a big beat. We'd be looking for more of a great start to 2026. Thank you.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Yeah, maybe just to, sorry, just speaking for me. I, we iterate, isn't it? Just Greg, we remain confident. You know, the single biggest risk is timing. It's not a question of if, it's more a question of when. There'll be some things outside our control. At the moment, we're managing very closely. We have much greater visibility on what needs to happen between now and the end of the year than we had at the same time last year, and we're managing it extremely tightly. That's what gives us the confidence that we're going to deliver those numbers by the end of the year.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Thank you.

[Glynis Johnson, Analyst - Building & Construction at Jefferies]

I thought we were going to get away with nothing from Glynnis, but there we go. Glynnis Johnson Jeffries. Oh, you know what? I'm not even going to send them to you, Greg. Tim, actually, they're really tight ones. You talked about the mix influence on price. I wasn't quite sure, are you guiding that mix upside comes back next year, or are you guiding that that's the new norm, so to speak? You talked about finished stock in London. You sort of excluded it from your stock. What is the finished stock in London, and more important, I guess, where do you anticipate it going? Is it still going to rise through the second half?

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

Okay, so three things. In terms of the ASP, I think it'll return pretty much to where it was before. I mean, the move is relatively small. It's only 3%. Is it going to go up 1% or 2%? We don't know. I've said before that ASP is a fairly meaningless number internally because we look at each individual site. It's only when we go around to this sort of forum where we aggregate it all up and look at average selling prices. The fundamentals are that the underlying pricing is about the same. In terms of the finished stock in London, the reason why we look at that differently is because they're more apartment-based buildings. You end up with a lumpier type stock available.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director at Vistry Group]

I'm not going to give an absolute quantum, partly because I might not get the number right, but also because I don't really want to get into breaking down all of our stock by divisions. We're not expecting that number to go up in the second half. We've got some prospects actually for some deals to sell some of those in the portfolio deals in the second half of the year. We would expect the London stocks to be coming down in the second half of the year. Actually, we probably could have brought it down in the first half of the year, but the deals that we were offered at the start of the year just weren't on attractive enough terms. We thought we'd hold our nerve and sell them in the second half.

[Glynis Johnson, Analyst - Building & Construction at Jefferies]

Perfect.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

You can tell from the tone now we are not where we were at the end of last year. We're in a, that doesn't work. Let's not do it. Confident mode.

[Glynis Johnson, Analyst - Building & Construction at Jefferies]

Chief of Stephen. Again, more sort of tied up. You talked about shared equity products and do-it-yourself home ownership. That seems to be capital heavy. I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit about what you are willing to do in order to get sales and how much risk there is in terms that you have to hold capital on the balance sheet. The second one was about the, you talked about the 100% forward sold sites and they're a bit more interesting. I think we used to call them partnership delivery.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Yeah.

[Glynis Johnson, Analyst - Building & Construction at Jefferies]

What proportion of Vistry going forward do you think might be that sort of partnership delivery? Going back to Will's question, how does that impact the margin? Because that's very high return on capital employed, but tends to be a lower margin.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

Yeah, go on, Stephen.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Should I do the first part?

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

No, you're all of it.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Oh, okay. In terms of shared equity and DISO, I see them being seen entirely as enablers. We've got open market stock. There was Help to Buy, which was a shared equity product. What exists in the market, what is being developed in the market, not just for us but with others—I think others have announced that they're looking at it as well—is a shared equity product that is a private sector shared equity product, which obviously has some cost to it. It means you're not going to apply it to displace your affordable delivery. You're applying it to assist with your open market sales, and that's how that would work. On DISO, I'm seeing that as exactly the same. This is an idea that hasn't, you know, I'm just promoting if I'm being honest.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Looking around the room, nobody here is old enough to remember Norman Lamont other than me, unfortunately. Norman Lamont with a housing market package. Thank you very much. Who looks like him? Oh, I'm sorry. Anyway, at that time, one of the interventions from government was do-it-yourself shared ownership, which was a product that allows the consumer to go to a housing association and qualify as a shared ownership purchaser. They would then receive endorsement from—they'd qualify, they'd receive the endorsement from the housing association who would have grant funding, and they would then be able to go out into the marketplace, find, if they qualified for it, a three-bed home, and then the housing association would buy it, and then they would own part of it. It's a straightforward shared ownership product, but instead of shared ownership all being built together on an estate, you had dispersed shared ownership.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

It was hugely problematic for housing associations. They ended up with lots of street-level second-hand properties. The EPC would have been horrendous. The costs of management, sorry, of maintenance, really problematic. What I think would really help the sector is a do-it-yourself shared ownership that's only focused on new build. That would allow housing associations to acquire assets that have good EPC, B or A outcomes, very good quality product like they do now, new build. It would allow the consumer, the purchaser, to go to any site, come to a Vistry site, Barratt site, Simmons site, anywhere, to look for a shared ownership and be able to support it. That's the product that I would like to see more evidence of in the marketplace. I've forgotten your second question now.

[Glynis Johnson, Analyst - Building & Construction at Jefferies]

100% forward-sold sites.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships at Vistry Group]

Yeah, 100% forward. I'd expect us to still be involved in 100% forward-sold sites at decent margins, but most of those will be subject to us negotiating with the partners. It's not something that we competitively bid for, those schemes. That tends to be not our position. What we tend to do is we find partners who are interested in 100% schemes, and we'll work with them and have a sensible margin on that basis.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

The margin, you're right, Glynnis, if we were to just buy the land and flip it, the margin would be less than a 12% operating margin because that would mean it would need to be a gross margin of 17%. It would be less, but it would be in the mix. We're seeing, obviously, very, very good for return on capital and it would generate cash. What we're saying is going forward, we will be flexible in certain parts of the country. We might buy the odd site that's pure house building to compensate for that move because we're doing four sites over here that are completely generating cash, et cetera, et cetera. We'll be flexible, but we've definitely looked at it in the round.

[Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair at Vistry Group]

That in itself would be a lower margin, infinite return on capital, but that would enable us to do one or two other things in different parts of the group, particularly maybe in the Southeast where it's harder to be a partnerships business than in the Midlands and the North at the moment. Good. On that, we have no time, I'm afraid, for, yeah, we are running short of time. No time for any questions from the phone. I'll just say thank you very much. Hopefully you enjoyed that and hopefully you got the tone of what we are saying. Thank you very much and have a good trip back in a taxi, no doubt. Thank you.

Participants

Executives

• Greg Fitzgerald, CEO & Executive Chair
• Tim Lawlor, CFO & Executive Director
• Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive - Countryside Partnerships

Analysts

• Will Jones, Equity Analyst - Construction & Building Materials at Rothschild & Co Redburn
• Chris Millington, Equity Analyst at Deutsche Numis
• Glynis Johnson, Analyst - Building & Construction at Jefferies