Vistry Group H2 2025 Earnings Report

Vistry Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 59.30
• 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: H2 2025
• Date: 3/4/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, March 4, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 3:30AM ET

Vistry Group (LON:VTY) is a leading homebuilder developing in partnership to deliver sustainable homes, communities, and social value, leaving a lasting legacy of places where people love to live. Operating across 25 regions, we build homes for those who need them right across the UK. Our partners include Registered Providers, Local Authorities, Homes England and Private Rented Sector providers. Our timber manufacturing capability, Vistry Works, is at the core of our strategy to deliver more quality homes, faster. We sell homes on the open market through three respected brands: Bovis Homes, Linden Homes, and Countryside Homes. We are a multi award-winning homebuilder and the Group has again been awarded the 5 Star Rating by the Home Builders Federation following the latest industry’s Customer Satisfaction Survey. 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. 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. For more information go to www.vistrygroup.co.uk

Vistry Group H2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Profit and balance-sheet improvement — FY2025 profit before tax came in in line with guidance with a very strong second half, net debt reduced to £144m and EPS helped by the ongoing buyback program.
• Positive Sentiment: Well positioned for the government affordable housing program — Vistry says it delivered ~15% of new affordable homes last year, is bidding for the £39bn 2026–2036 program, and has long-standing Homes England / housing-association relationships plus Vistry Works capacity (up to 10,000 timber-frame units).
• Neutral Sentiment: Sales acceleration to free up cash — management has pushed tactical discounting and incentives to double sales rates (YTD sales rate +40%) and targets >£100m net cash generation in 2026, but expects near-term margin compression from those incentives.
• Negative Sentiment: Building-safety costs and provisions remain material — the group spent £46m in 2025, added £14m for newly identified buildings and now expects roughly £70m gross (≈£60m net) of building-safety spend in 2026 amid slower-than-desired remediation progress.
• Neutral Sentiment: Land and working-capital stance — Vistry bought opportunistically (11,000+ plots) and targets ~3.5 years of land supply, but WIP and capital employed remain elevated and need to be reduced to reach management’s ROCE and sub-£2bn capital-employed objectives.

Presentation

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

Morning, everyone. Welcome to our full year results presentations for 2025. Delighted to be joined today by our Finance Director, Tim Lawlor, and our Chief Executive of Partnerships, Stephen Teagle. The agenda, I will do a very quick introduction. Tim will follow up with the financial review. Stephen will talk about the markets, I will go into quite a few slides on strategy and operational update, finishing off with a outlook. Of course, we'll have the Q&A, which we all can't wait for. The 2025 headlines. 2025, profit before tax in line with expectations, which included a very, very strong 2025.

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

Just on that, you know, thank you to our team because there were a lot of skeptics around following the issues we had at the end of 2024 that didn't think we would get to the numbers, particularly when we said it would be dramatically second half weighted. We did. The important thing there is, showing the resilience of the business and the model is we had absolutely no help whatsoever from the market. You know, I've been around for 45 years, and quite often you see a house builder get into trouble, and the following year it's boom time, and they get out of jail because the market's been quite good. We had no help whatsoever last year from markets.

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

We're all very proud of the fact that we are producing one in seven, that's 15% of the total affordable homes being constructed in the country. The group, following massive reorganization, is lean, efficient, and incredibly stable. We were probably along with Persimmon, I would suggest, the only active house builders in the land market last year, which was incredibly soft, and we've bought some great land last year, taking advantage of those soft markets, which will help the company dramatically over the next few years. Net debt reduced down to GBP 144 million at the end of 2025. Stephen Teagle and I would both say, you know, we're very delighted that during the year, and it will start coming through at the end of this year, the GBP 39 billion affordable housing program, 2026 to 2036.

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

Stephen and I have been around for, as I say, a long time, have never seen an injection of capital in affordable housing of that nature ever. We're positioned for growth. Just going off script slightly, there were two announcements this morning. The first, obviously, about our results. The second, announcing my retirement. I'm told by Tim that some of the feedback is people were surprised. I'm not sure why people are surprised. It's been all planned. The board have been expecting it. I've done 45 years. I'm 62 in June. My wife is older than me, and she's very lucky, of course. She is older than me. I just want to enjoy myself.

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

As some of you will know, I've got one or two spare sets of clothes. I'm, you know, I'm in a pretty good place, and there's nothing more to it than absolutely that. I will be around. It's very much business as usual. That's the message, within the group for quite some time to come. No issues, no, nothing, no second guessing. It's just me. It's coming up to that sort of time. The business is in good shape. There's a new social housing program coming forward. It's the right time for all concerned. As I say, where are we? The business is stabilized. The new organization structure with the executive chairs that we've got is working exceptionally well.

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

We are differentiated from our house building peer group, and we're completely aligned with the government, and we'll keep coming back to that, Stephen and I, during the presentation. We've got some great long-term relationships with the largest housing associations and Homes England. These relationships aren't over the last two or three years. These are relationships that, you know, kind of Stephen and I have had since, you know, before 2000. You know, years, and years, and years of doing affordable housing. Don't forget, your average housing association is generally wary about your average house builder. 'cause they know they only really want to deal with them when the markets are poor. When the markets are good, they drop them like a stone.

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

We're positioned ideally to capture the social grant program that's coming up now, 2026-2036, and we've started the bidding process. This last point, not to be underestimated, and I'll come back to this time and time again, we are very vertically integrated with our Vistry Works operation. Which has got 3 factories, incredibly good. The product that they're producing is excellent. What I would say, timber frame is generally, you know, net more expensive than not generally, it is more expensive than building traditionally. Where you gain is speed, reduction in prelims. I'm not sure timber frame works for pure house builders. It does when they're going hell for leather and they're building quickly.

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

When they're not building quickly, as is the case at the moment, you're not getting that speed because what's the point of building when you can't sell, as quick as you want? Timber frame works very, very well for a partnership business where you've got the visibility, not so well for a house builder. Just a little quip on that, Cala Homes, private equity are pulling out of timber frame because it's more expensive, because they're not selling quick enough, and they're fed up with the prelim overruns without that coming through. Just something to bear in mind, it is vital with a partnerships business. The government and housing associations also like the MMC, so it really, really works well for us. Looking ahead, we're absolutely set to benefit from the partner-funded growth.

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

Rent convergence and rent settlement have both now been announced, which is great. I'll just remind some of you that at least one housing association in London has said that rent convergence is as important to their balance sheetAnd building going forward as the GBP 2,026 billion, GBP 36 billion, GBP 39 billion. Rent convergence for housing associations, it repairs their balance sheet is huge, and also don't underestimate the 10-year rent settlement. We're 15% of the market. You just need to look and do the numbers. We'll obviously be looking to increase our market share, but even maintaining our market share at 15% shows that we've got a fantastic opportunity ahead of us. That opportunity is now coming at the end of this at the end of this year.

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

Are we disappointed with the delay since it's been announced? Yes, but the process is happening. It'll all be announced in September. We'll have visibility before that. It's coming. Open market growth in the end is inevitable. It's highly cyclical. I just don't see it, anytime soon. What's going on at the present moment in time in Iran is making that even more uncertain because not only will we potentially see prices going up, which we've made a little line in our forward projections, which we're talking to analysts about, but early days, and it could all end tomorrow. The longer it goes on, the more those prices will start to come through. Don't underestimate consumer confidence also being hit by what's going over there as well.

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

We're reducing our inventory, and that will give us more options with capital allocation. We absolutely, with our 25 business units and our Vistry Works operation, which is capable of doing 10,000 units a year just from the three factories, we are very, very able and willing to respond to the opportunities that are ahead of us. On that, I'll hand over to Tim. I'm just dying to see what Tim's joke is gonna be with this. Oh, he's changed it.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

I changed it.

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

Oh, I'm looking at my screen. Sorry. Something's gone wrong there, isn't it? It's probably me, but.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

Here we go.

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

There we are. Yeah.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

We're back. We're back.

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

I'm very much looking forward to the joke that inevitably has got to come from that photo.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

I'm not sure. Do you want me to tell it up the step ladder?

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

Every dog has his day.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

I'm not sure I'm gonna drink. What we've got here, we've got a picture of, we've got a picture of our site in Tottenham, the Meridian site. In the foreground there, we've got members of the Vistry management team, watering the green shoots of recovery. There we go. It's pretty poor, isn't it? Let's move on from that. The year-end numbers are old news. We went through most of these numbers with you back at the trading update in the middle of January. No surprises really within here. As Greg said, profit before tax came in in line with our guidance.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

We had a strong second half of the year, where we saw a tick up in Op margin and a strong proportion of the full year growth in 25. Revenue-wise, we were down 4% despite being down 8%, 9% on completions. We had a slight increase on ASP, which I'll come to in a second. It's worth noting that EPS growth is greater than the APBT growth because we're starting to see some of the benefits of the share buyback program coming through there. That's the principal reason why EPS grew at 6% rather than PBT at 2%. In terms of net debt, we reduced it during the course of the year. We did see a tick up in average net debt.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

We went from GBP 698 of average daily net debt, and it's important that it's, remember it's daily net debt rather than what most people talk about, which is month-end net debt. Average daily debt of GBP 698 to GBP 734 during the course of the year. ROCE is obviously still some way away from where we want it to be. We want to be a high ROCE business, and hence some of the actions that we're taking this year to try and release capital from the balance sheet. On to revenue. As we've talked about, total units were down 9% year-on-year, hit by a couple of market forces.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

In the first half of the year, there was a fair degree of uncertainty in the partner market, particularly in anticipation or the uncertainty around what was gonna get announced in June with the GBP 39 billion program that was eventually announced. We saw some pickup in the second half of the year, particularly around affordable. Albeit the POS market remained pretty moribund during the course of the year. A lot of the POS providers were going out for funding or reaching the end of their funding allocations. There's some signs that that might pick up this year, we still expect more growth to come from the affordable side of partner funded rather than the POS side. Open market completions.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

You know, this is largely driven by having fewer sales outlets as we've migrated away from the former house building sites, so fewer sales outlets. There's clearly some self-help measures that will help us improve the sales rate, but it would be nice to have a market, some market tailwind as well to push up open market completions. There's no really underlying theme, I think, around average selling prices. Most of our movements are related to mix factors. In the partner world, we sold more in London and the South East, where the average cost of a unit is higher than in the North. In open market, we had more large products being sold during the course of the year, which again, was at higher ASP.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

The underlying theme was that generally house prices were pretty flat during the course of the year. We did have higher land sales in the year, as we mentioned back in January. Our land sales were about GBP 180 million of revenue. We'll continue to have land sales as part, a core part of our strategy. When we buy a site, we will identify parcels of land, particularly for large sites, where part of our capital strategy is to sell those parcels. That's in the main what happened last year. The margin that we take on those is not exceptional margin. We just take the blended site margins of the rest of the site. You can assume that it's around sort of 20% gross margin on those land sales.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

It's not the exceptional driver that some thought it might be of the profit growth in the year. Not a lot to say on tenure mix year-on-year. It's pretty similar to 24. We saw a mix within the, within affordable, as I mentioned before, from POS to additionality. I think during FY 2026, we'll probably see a similar overall mix between partner-funded and open market, and there are two forces there. One is the push that we'll talk about during the course of the presentation on open market, which will push up open market volumes. The arrival of the Affordable Housing program will push up on the partner-funded side. At the moment, we're expecting they'll be roughly equal.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

Obviously, the timing of both how long the open market push goes for and when the affordable housing finds its way through will impact the mix. At this stage, we'd say it's probably about the same for 26 as it was for 25. Okay, into operating profit. The margin went up in the second half of the year. We had overall, for the year, a 100 basis point improvement in gross margin. What we're seeing is the new sites coming on at higher margin. We're buying sites on higher margin and a higher ROCE. As we had the tail off, particularly the southern, the south division issues from 24, we're seeing some margin improvement coming from that. Overhead's up a little bit year-on-year.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

In light of the south division issues of 2024, we invested more money in assurance activities. That contributed to additional overhead, and there was also a return to some variable pay, again, with all bonuses ceased in 2024 in light of the issues we experienced. What about 2026 margin? Well, the underlying margin of the business will continue to tick up as we get efficiencies and we get economies of scale and operating leverage. There will be some reduction as a result of the sales push activity. Covering that briefly.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

At the start of the year, straight after the trading statement, we gathered together to say, "Look, the sales at the end of last year weren't good enough." Also, the capital and the balance sheet is proving to be too sticky, and we recognize that we need to give some push into sales in advance of the spring selling season. There was a feeling that there was some constraints on our selling within the business because people don't want to... They love the houses. They think there's intrinsic value there, and it's quite hard for a salesperson to offer the discount if they think they're gonna sell it later at a higher price. The other thing is that there was some constraints in people's minds about not touching the margin.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

What we've done is say, "Look, we need to get the sales going. We recognize that that may have some margin implications, but it will give us good momentum, and crucially, it will generate cash and reduce our WIP." That was the driver behind the change, and so far, so good. We've seen this 40% year-on-year improvement in sales rate in the year-to-date. That's really encouraging. We'll start to see the cash come through from that in the second quarter. What it does mean is that there's gonna be some margin tightening, particularly in the first half of the year, as we see the impacts of that on those sites. I think the other thing we'd say in terms of margin for the year is we keep being hit, as we all are, by international surprises, international events.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

We don't know exactly how they'll play out. I think this time last week, we might have been slightly more bullish, and we're perhaps slightly more cautious this week given what's happened in the last week in the Middle East. We don't yet know what impact that's gonna have, if any. You know, is it gonna impact our build costs? Is it gonna impact our cost inflation? Is it gonna impact customer confidence? It's too early to call it, but we're probably slightly tempering our expectations for 2026 in light of the uncertainty that that brings. That's operating profit. In terms of build costs, so continue to get the benefit of the scale of operations and the fact that we keep building.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

Our build costs came in at, in 25, about 2.5% up year-over-year, which is pretty much as we guided throughout last year. We have framework arrangements with all of our material suppliers or 90% of our material suppliers, and we contract in advance, which gives us some protection against short-term volatility in pricing. Subject to whatever happens coming out of the Middle East, then we're expecting minimal material cost increases during the course of the year. Just in terms of what's the impact of the higher fuel costs are and the higher gas prices are, in terms of the direct impact, it's not that significant. It's obviously what happens with our suppliers and the supply chain and what they do, particularly those suppliers that are heavily reliant on gas.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

I'm sure there'll be some discussions at some point if this price increase is sustained about our material costs. The labor supply is good. The fact that others aren't building helps us. Puts us in a stronger negotiating position, our subcontractors continue to like the certainty that our business model offers to them. That enables us to hold prices pretty flat. In some places, in some parts of the country, we are seeing some reductions in subcontractor costs during 26. Overall, minimal impact on build costs subject to whatever happens as we go through the year. On Vistry Works, Greg mentioned this before, really good progress in terms of production. Up 60% year-on-year in terms of timber frame units.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

The roof trusses, it was the first year of production, and we did over 3,000 units in 2025. We're expecting further growth in 2026. As we see on the slide here, 6,000 timber frame units in 2026, and we've still got capacity for more. We can probably find a way to deliver up to 10,000 units without having to buy or take a new factory on. We've got a couple of years to see how things develop before we expand our factory footprint. Working through the rest of the P&L. Overall net finance costs were down by 9.7% year-on-year. In terms of bank interest, although the average debt went up, the impact on interest costs of the increase in average debt was offset by better daily management of cash balances.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

We've got these new mid-month facilities, which are slightly cheaper. Give us more levers to pull in terms of making drawings. That's offset the daily debt increase, and then the average cost of debt reduction from 7% to 3% to 6.3% is the driver of the reduction in net bank interest. The land creditor discount unwind was flat year-on-year, but you'll may have spotted that land creditors has gone up during the course of the year, and that was largely due to land being bought towards the end of 2025. As a result of that, there will be higher land creditor discount unwind in 2026.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

We expect finance costs overall will go up slightly with the land creditor impact, probably slightly higher than the benefits we've got from the reduction in average net debt. Net JV interest was down there. There's lower average cost of debt and lower average cost of borrowing as well, finding its way through to us as well. Tax, our effective tax rates was 27.9% compared to 28.3% last year. We just found some more benefits coming through in terms of claims and reliefs. 27.9% is probably the number to put in the models going forward. In terms of the exceptionals, we talked before about the GBP 12.8 settlement with the CMA.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

Unfortunately, there were also some eye-watering fees, legal fees and IT fees that went alongside that as we had to stop deleting everything, store everything offsite and spend a lot of time with lawyers. That contributed a bit to the restructuring costs as well. Exceptionals were down significantly year-on-year because last year we had a GBP 100 million hit on the building safety provision that went through exceptionals. That's why the reported profit for the year has jumped significantly, so we haven't got that big exceptional. Turning to building safety then. We're making good progress. We've worked our way through 21 buildings, spent GBP 46 million on those buildings in the year. I think it's fair to say the progress still isn't quite at the pace we would like it to be.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

We know that Building Safety Regulator are taking steps to improve the sign-off process and get us out on site faster. We are expecting a pickup in 2026, albeit it's still not at the full sort of rate of efficiency that we would like. We identified a few more buildings, or probably it's better to say we had a few more buildings identified to us, principally sites that we worked as the contractor on years ago that came up through claims that we weren't aware of. We're expecting, that's 11 buildings. We added GBP 14 million to the provision for those 11. We expect that those will tail off. I think it's, with each year that goes by, less likely that buildings come out of the woodwork to add to the provision. Against that, we've had recoveries.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

recoveries are ahead of where we expected it to be. We've got GBP 17 million of recoveries identified, GBP 13 million of which we got the cash for in year. The other movement on here is discounting, where we have to discount our provision and unwind that discount each year and move the discount rate each year. That was a GBP 11 million charge and non-cash really to the exceptionals during the course of the year. In terms of next year, to say at the bottom there, ramp up in spending. I have said in the past, it's one that I've got consistently wrong and I've overestimated how much money we're gonna spend on building safety. I think we're always expecting that it's gonna speed up.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

I'd say now it's gonna be roughly GBP 70 million of gross spend next year, probably around GBP 60 million of net spend in 2026 on building safety. In terms of land activity, so we secured over 11,000 plots in the period. A lot were towards the end of the year. We were opportunistic in the build up to the Autumn Statement when there were a few nervy landowners who wanted to sell quickly, and we had some good deals that we could take there. That's good. The overall size of the land bank coming down, we probably expect a similar sort of level next year. We'll continue to wind down to have a land bank of somewhere around three and a half years of coverage in the land bank.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

In terms of strategic land, that continues to be a good source. It's probably not provided as much into the business over the last couple of years as we'd like. Getting planning is still slow. From the time of planning application to actually getting full planning is still 18-24 months, which is longer than we would like. That still feels like the right source, a good source of 25% of our land, particularly with some of the NPPF announcements that are going to make it easier to free up that strategic land. In terms of the cash flow, overall, during the course of the year, our cash flow was about GBP 130 million better than the previous year.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

An inflow this year of GBP 36 million compared to an outflow last year of GBP 92 million. Walking through this bridge from left to right, from the opening to the closing, obviously, we made GBP 270 million of profit. There was a net decrease in inventories. This has got some constituent parts which I'll come to on the balance sheet in a second. A net outflow on payables and receivables. The big bit was probably in receivables, where the receivables balances picked up during the course of the year. We've got land sale debtors has gone up by GBP 55 million year-on-year. Again, land sales were towards the end of the year. We've also had a pickup in partner funded receivables, again, really from year-end activity not coming in. Most of that cash will be received in the first quarter.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

The other side is on payables. At the end of 2024, we had a higher deferred income balance. In other words, we'd had cash in advance, which we'd not yet recognized in the P&L at the end of 2024, which has unwound slightly and reduced that balance down during 2025. Not much to say on net investment in JVs. Building safety, we've covered. Restructuring and others were those, the costs of the reorganization. Some of that cost was taken in 2024, the reorganization following the South Division issues. We've also got in there some CapEx, particularly around Vistry Works, where we've added some more machinery into their factories during the course of the year. In terms of capital employed, this is not where we want it to be yet.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

We've said a couple of years ago, you know, our rough target is to get to capital employed around GBP 2 billion, and we're significantly above that. The principal area is WIP. We knew this time last year that WIP was higher than we wanted. We set an expectation that we'd try and reduce WIP by GBP 200 million. For some of the reasons I mentioned earlier, it's proved to be stickier. I think particularly in London. London has had a very poor sales year. I think that's widely known. WIP can be lumpier in London because we're building apartment blocks, so you can't sort of stop halfway through and sell, start selling the flats.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

You've got to build a whole lot if you're gonna sell anything, so you end up with lumpier WIP there. We've also had WIP impacted by the end of year deals, so there was some build-outs which we expected to sell at the end of the year, and the deal slipped into 2026, so we'll get the money for that in 2026. There are probably a few sites where the infrastructure is higher than we would like it to be. Some of the build programs will have been from quite a while ago, and we've had to. Even before the partnership strategy change. You end up building out some infrastructure. You's got a build program that relies on putting infrastructure in place for the private and the partner funded at the same time.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

While the partner funded is selling, we've got infrastructure embedded that will only recover when the private houses are sold. Finally, on a more positive note, it wasn't that the action we took last year didn't reap some benefits. Our heavy focus on unsold stock did reduce the unsold stock balance by more than half outside London. GBP 50 million of unsold stock reduction during the course of 2025. On the JV side, the JV overall hasn't moved particularly much year-on-year. Within that, there is, just like on our own fully owned balance sheet, there's more WIP than we would like. We're working closely with our joint venture partners to try and find ways to accelerate some of the slow-moving stock in our joint venture sites to release capital for both us and our partners.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

Finally, I think I've covered the other asset movement, which is around the rise in partner receivables and the land debtors. Finally for me, in terms of capital allocation. We've got GBP 30 million to go on our share buyback program that we announced back in September 2024. We'll continue to plug away at that, and we'll complete that in the year. I think previously we said we'd complete it by the AGM. It may now be slightly slower than that. Then come the half year, we're, we'll, as a board, look at where we are, where the progress we've made on sales, the progress we've made on debt reduction, and determine if there will be an interim distribution announcement. If there isn't, then, you know, we'll continue to consider that during the second half of the year.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

I think that does it for me. Over to you, Steve.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

Thanks, Tim Lawlor. Good morning, everyone. Good to see everyone. That's a great picture there of our scheme at Ledbury. That's some Section 106 plots with a small rural housing association or local regional housing association called Connexus. Just exemplifying our diversity of partners that we work with. We've just been looking back over 2025. What I'm gonna do is look at how we drive value going forward through the market conditions that we've got, and we leverage our strategic assets of our long-term relationships with our partners, and our vertical integration, as Greg mentioned, and importantly, our ability to work closely with government on applying grant. Let's just look at the opportunity at the moment. It is very much undoubtedly a strengthening opportunity.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

We see our position within the market and our long-term engagement with partners, really encouraging partners to engage with us as they build their programs and as we go forward with delivery. The government has done what the government is going to do on the demand side for affordable housing. We now have visibility of all those changes, and we'll touch on those in a moment, feeding through. Those government commitments are now writ large. We can see all of them. And that's resulted in a step change in partners' ambitions, and in a moment, I'll refer to that as an inflection in the market. It is undoubtedly a time that we have not seen before, as Greg mentioned. This is a moment when we can really start to work with our partners, and deliver on the homes that they're trying to invest in.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

We've seen early part of the spring season, although it's rained a lot, we've actually seen some very positive Movement in the open market in terms of what's happening at our outlets, so we'll touch on that. First though, our alignment with the government strategy, which we've mentioned before, is both strengthening us and also very profound. Greg said 15% of affordable housing market last year, 15% of the delivery of new build homes was via Vistry. The total expenditure annually is around the GBP 15 billion mark in terms of investment in new affordable homes, and that covers Section 106 and grant funded.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

We've been very successful in moving up our Section 106 homes, partly because we engage with partners early, we haven't had the problems that others have had, but also partly because we're able to align that with our grant funded delivery, what we call additionality, which has allowed us to work with our partners on delivering that. That has not been a problem for us. We've been able to therefore deliver an increase in the grant award over the last year. We saw a 37% increase in our grant award from Homes England last year. That's not just because of 1 year's delivery, that's because we've delivered consistently across the 5 years. That delivery performance is one of the things that gives us confidence in our bidding under the SAHP.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

We've been able to also do additional schemes where we've captured funding from partners who have needed to finish off their program commitments or where there's been slippage. That's allowed us to deliver more. Our total grant level has risen to GBP 252 million. The reason that's important is we'll be talking about a new program in a moment. Over the life of that 5 years of this program, we've seen a threefold increase in our allocation to GBP 252 million. That demonstrates our ability to deliver with partners and the fact that we've deployed those funds very quickly. It come as no surprise that we anticipate the National Housing Strategy, therefore, to focus on mixed tenure and the partnerships model as one of the ways that the industry should be evolving towards delivering the government ambition.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

What do we see in our customer and partner markets at the moment? On the open market, we've had a mixture of external and internal factors. Externally, we've seen an increase in the availability of higher loan-to-value mortgages, and we've seen rate reductions and some more positive customer sentiment before the events of last week. That's resulted through our contact center. We've been able to see higher levels of inquiries and, interestingly, higher levels of appointments than any week in 2025. Not only are people digitally looking at what we've got offering, they're prepared to come and meet with us in our sales outlets as well. That's resulted in a very positive start to the spring selling season. We have sales are 40% up year to date on where we were in 2025. That's a stat that's extremely important.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

Now, we've been focused on targeted discounting and also using tactical use of enablers in order to get people into our marketing, but that is really giving us momentum. On the PRS side, and Tim described it as moribund, I think there's a structural weakness in the PRS side. We've certainly seen a transition to more single family homes from multifamily. That's an interesting occurrence over the last 12 months. There remain a paucity of players who have got the ability to commit volume consistently and engage with us where they've got both the funding and the operational platforms aligned. The people that we've worked with most frequently over the last 2 or 3 years have been refinancing.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

That's caused a pause in that market last year, and it is a market that needs to mature before it will really deliver on what the government's ambitions are for it. But of course, working with Vistry is a great opportunity because we give standardized product, we can optimize yields by giving forward visibility to partners. Affordable housing, where partners now sighted on that improved financial capacity, now sighted on the ability to bid for funds, a really important moment for affordable housing. I just remind you of our 3 sub-markets that we operate in. Those traditional registered providers are the ones that had a lot of the headwinds and have had stock liabilities. Interestingly, the regulator described them receiving robust investment for new homes over the last quarter.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

GBP 4 billion raised by traditional registered providers to go into investing in new homes. Local authorities, this is an interesting fact. 2025, there was the highest level of local authority delivery of affordable housing for 40 years. 16% of all affordable homes was local authorities. It's interesting today to think back 40 years ago in a field somewhere in a place called Newton Abbot, somebody did a deal with the town council about delivering on some public land there some affordable housing. There you go, 40 years ago. For-profit registered providers who we refer to increasingly as institutionally backed registered providers. We have one of those within our group called Linden First, and we're at the final stages of confirming who we're gonna work with as a partner to capitalize Linden First.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

We see entering a framework with Linden First as a way of our routes to market, amplifying, not displacing, but amplifying the work that we already do with registered providers and bringing capacity into the sector. Those three markets, the wheels are turning. It's beginning to come through, which is great. We've added this slide because we thought it would be helpful at this point in time to give you some idea of how grant enters the ecosystem. Three things here. Firstly, you can see on the left-hand side there, grant, accessing grant funding from the government, we are able to bid for that directly as Vistry, or our partners obtain the funding. Either way, we'll be delivering homes, whether we get the grant direct or whether our partners get it.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

That allows us to both bid for grant from Homes England, and that bidding has now opened. On the right-hand side, on one level, we can be agnostic who gets the grant, whether it's our partners or whether it's Vistry, because the P&L effect is the same. The P&L takes valuations and we take that through on regular, hopefully monthly, or sectional completion valuations throughout the life of the scheme. There's no difference in the P&L. Where there is a difference is in terms of the cash. When we get the grant directly, under the new SAHP, the proposals are that you would receive 40% of the grant when you buy the site and 35% when you start on site.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

On the basis that we obtain the grant for schemes that we've already got, you can see how that would benefit our cash flow in terms of accessing that grant at that stage. The third thing, which isn't on this slide, but is really important for our business as a mixed tenure platform, but also extremely important for the government, is the leverage that grant provides across the whole market. If you've got a pre-sold model and you're pre-selling and you're using grant funding to deliver affordable housing, you're more likely to open that site and deliver on the PRS. You're more likely to open that site and deliver on the open market. One of the things, and I don't think the government measures this and captures it, the leverage from that grant funding across all tenures is really significant.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

I think you'll see that flowing through as the grant funding dynamics in the future. I said it's an inflection from funding policy to delivery, that's what we've seen. The government, I think, very quickly stepped up and came out with its policy. Translating that to funding has taken a bit longer than we would have liked. The reality is now the SAHP is open. Bids need to be in by April. Homes England has already received bids through an alternative route for funding. The wheels are turning. People are beginning to receive funds and get siting on allocation. I suspect allocations announcements will be in the late summer, we'll have an indication of how successful we are with our bidding then.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

Really importantly, though, partners are not waiting to receive allocations. They're talking to us now. They're pricing schemes for us at the moment. They're wanting to talk to us about having frameworks in place that give them visibility for delivery. They're looking for what land opportunities they can come in with us on. People are building their programs, and I expect that to really be a consistent theme over the next six months. What does the net effect of those reinforced demand-side elements have? It's improved capacity. I think there will be an absolute focus on early delivery. We know that grant awards measure, they will be weighted towards early delivery. I expect an uptick in the first three years in that, and obviously that will be one of the things that informs our bid.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

If you take together collectively those policy changes by government, the rent settlement, rent convergence, GBP 39 billion, and a Section 106 environment, which is encouraging higher levels of affordable housing, even with an increase in social rent, I would expect to see the average long-term affordable housing move from around 55,000 new build, this is new build per year, to around 70,000. That's a 30% increase in volumes. We've already got 15% of a market. That market is growing, and we have a platform and an operation that allows us to respond to the opportunity. What are we doing with that opportunity? Well we're bringing together two elements. Our mixed tenure platform is what we think will drive value for the business and also in terms of the growth.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

We're taking those elements on partnering, the ability to have frameworks that give visibility to us and our partners. Bidding for direct grant awards. We know how beneficial that is. We've been receiving direct grant in different forms since 2008. We were a very early player in that particular space. Doing more work with local authorities. We've got precedents to work with local authorities, both in joint venture and directly commissioning, and we are focusing on being best in class as a partner. Really important elements when you're looking at long-term relationships with partners. Fusing that with that developer ethos of being able to offer successful open market sales. Self-help there around our branding and our use of the contact center, which has definitely driven a more successful engagement with prospective purchasers earlier.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

Focused on sales excellence, and I'm really pleased to see that's been reflected in some improvement in our Trustpilot scores. Bringing that mixed tenure offering of open market sales along with pre-sales is really important. Put that together in that delivery Venn diagram, that allows us to increase our platform of work in joint ventures with local authorities and RPs. Really pleased to see us off and running with PlacePoint. Our joint venture with Homes England, the bid and Linden First and our position in terms of public sector land, which is extremely strong, and we intend to focus on more of that in our engagement with local authorities and combined authorities. I'm gonna pass over to somebody who was in the field in Newton Abbot. Great.

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

Okay. Thanks, Stephen. Thanks very much, Stephen. Great presentation, and a good presentation from Tim as well. Good to see him talking about roof trusses. If you close your eyes or as I did, you can nearly believe that he actually knows what one is. Great to see. Our strategy and our competitive advantage. Strategy on land and planning. A three and a half year or thereabout land bank, and we've got more than that at the present moment in time. We are exceptionally competitive in the land market with our strategy, particularly on larger sites. As far as I'm concerned, if we're bidding for a large site, we would be favorites to win it with our strategy. End of. From a actual competitive advantage perspective, we have a great relationship with our partners. Our partners have land. The government have land.

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

We are very, very good on bidding for public land, where it's not just price, that counts. Land 3.5 Years in a strong place on public land, and our model makes us very, very competitive. On build, frankly, nobody is building cheaper than Vistry. I would put my reputation on the line on that by some distance. Just look at over the last 2-3 years what the others have been talking about with regards to build inflation and what we've been talking about. Subcontractors absolutely love our model. They treat us as paying the mortgage. They work for the other house builders on the back of that might pay for a holiday. They need the visibility. They do not want to get the phone calls as they're getting at the present moment in time on a Friday afternoon.

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

I only need two guys next week, Fred, because we're slowing right down because we're just not building, quick enough. The vertical integration that Vistry Works gives us is absolutely essential to the model. If you have visibility, you know you're gonna build two, three, four, 500 units on a site. That's when Vistry Works comes into itself. If you've got a timber frame manufacturing facility and you don't. You've got lots of sites, but you don't know how quickly you're gonna build, that whole benefit goes out of the window. Vistry Works works incredibly well from a build perspective as a partnerships business. When.

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

If you look at sales, when we start on site, we basically market test up to 75% of what we're going to do because as you've seen from the stats that Tim put up there, 75% of our model is either Section 106 or pre-sold. It's only 25 or thereabouts percent that we're actually taking a risk on, which is the private sales within the market. Our relationships with, you know, our competitive advantage, if, as I'm sure they are and we know they're all looking into it, It's not straightforward to get in with Homes England, as Stephen's touched on a number of times there.

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

To get into a, and get a really strong position in the 2026, 2036 program, you've got to have a track record, and we're the only house builder, Persimmon to a little bit, and maybe McCarthy Stone, but that's a different model, that has got a track record for the last 20 years on dealing with a program. If you look at the 2021, 2026 program, the best performing partner, strategic partner within Homes England, and there's 32 of them, is Vistry. Hence, we're very confident with the outturn, what we'll get from the 2026, 2036 program. Housing associations been around for a long time. They know how cyclical house building is. They know house builders come a-calling sometimes, and then they drop them for dead.

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

I was at, recently at, a big meeting with the government, Chancellor of the Exchequer, housing secretary, housing minister, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in a room with some contractors and some large house builders and the chief exec of the National Housing Federation, which is the body that deals with housing associations. Rather embarrassingly, just came out in the room and said, "The problem, sir," talking to the Secretary of State of Housing, "is there's only one company that treats housing associations as they want to be treated with, and that's with respect, ongoing relationships." She said, "And that's Vistry." I got over it quite quickly. I was sat next to David Thomas, and he didn't enjoy that so much as I did. These things are built on years and years and years of experience.

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

It is, it's a real barrier to entry. We've talked about, I've got 3 case studies. Last year in November, we bought a very large site, 2,200 units in Worcester. We took massive advantage of the fact that we completed the day before the government's budget, as Tim talked about last year, and did very, very well out of it, I have to say. We were about to enter into a JV with a top 5 housing association because the housing associations, they're not just waiting for the grant to come through. They know the grant's coming. They've got the rent settlement. They've got the convergence. They are now active, as I'll come on to in two or three slides' time.

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

Housing associations are now talking to us again with vigor about entering into JVs and what opportunities have we got. This particular housing association in the next 6 weeks will enter into a JV on part of this site. Also to enable us to get the return on capital plus 40%, and in fact, it's way over 40% on this site, we've also built in some land sales. These are planned land sales that we will do during the course of this year going into next year. Land sales are a part of the everyday operation, not a fire sale to get to a half or full year position. 45% will be partner funded, and I'm not sure whether we'll use two brands, Bovis and Linden.

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

We might even use a third brand on that. A great example of what we've done last year, and a great example of one being competitive in the land market. That is a prime site, by the way. That is a prime house building site, and we're the ones who have bought it. It's not a site that no house builder would want. That's prime. Strategy case number two, innovation. On top of Vistry Works, timber frame and all the rest of it, we've got the Mauer brick cladding system. This is 3-D computer generated, built a lot quicker. Again, would we be doing that at the present moment in time on a new build house that we're gonna sell to Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Probably not. That's a bit of a risk for the minute.

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

We'll work with our housing association, Places for People. This is a site we've got with Places for People. One of, again, top five housing association up in Bradford. "What do you think about this?" "Yeah, we'll work with you." We're doing it on their site. It'll be their risk. I don't think there is any risk with regards to selling the units. The housing associations and Homes England love this kind of stuff. That is we're gonna roll that out to 10 sites during the course of this year. If the government want to build 300,000 homes a year, guys, this is how things are gonna have to be done, 'cause there just ain't enough tradesmen out there in the industry. The average age of a bricklayer is 54.

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

You know, we'll do well to replace the number of bricklayers, let alone, you know, get more into the game. Our timber frame apprentice program is going incredibly well, and standardization, again, we've now got 50 standard homes, future homes house types, which have been designed specifically with timber frame in mind to reduce that cost time and time again. That's a great photograph there. Some, some comedian in the business has put down a bit of career development for me. I didn't fix all of the panels there. I just fixed that one, and I have to own up, immediately I fixed it was taken off and put into the skip as a, as a very, very poor job. Strategy case number 3. Partner Journey.

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

This was introduced in the summer of 2025. Would you believe we're the only housebuilder that goes out to our housing associations and asks, "How are we doing?" On a proper standard format. The housing associations love it. We all do it through the HBF. We're a 5-star housebuilder on the HBF, and we're also a 5-star housebuilder with regards to.This was done independently, a 5-star housebuilding with our housing association, local authority customers. We have a simple framework, assist 16 steps to ensure the highest level of service. 21 of our 25 businesses are 5-star, the other 4 are 4-star. 97.5% of our partners responding indicated that they would like to work with Vistry again.

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

Again, long, long-term relationships we're always trying to improve, and it's bizarre that we're the only people out there that actually canvas and get their opinion on how we're doing. We do get some comments as well about how we can improve, which we obviously take on board. Current trading and outlook. Well, headline here is we have started the year exceptionally well. Tim talked about what we're doing with regards to sales. We announced, you know, the snapshot of our results, I think it was on January the 14th. A week or so later, I'm about to start doing business unit reviews, where I sit down with all the individual business unit boards and go through state of the nation on a quarterly basis and what we're looking for.

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

Yeah, as you get older, you lose a yard of pace, but I know where the ball's going. I absolutely, in all of those meetings, and this is from week 5 onwards, and we're in week 10 now, I didn't ask, I demanded that each business unit go forth and double their sales rate. I am concerned about what might happen to the private market during the course of this year with regards to house builders just not building enough units, and that will start hitting them at some point. Like to get one step ahead. The business units, I've said to them, "You tell me on your individual prices, you're gonna double. You tell me what you need to do to get those sales through." That initiative has gone exceptionally well.

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

The fact that we're 40% ahead hides the fact that after week 4, we were 9 units ahead of 2025. That 40% has come from 5 weeks, basically over a 10-week period, if I'm making sort of sense. That is really, really, really worked well. With what's going on in Iran at the moment, which I obviously didn't know was going to happen, we're very, very pleased with what we're doing. The current order book stands at GBP 4.5 billion. Again, at the end of a program, that is when you're gonna have the lowest order book. At the start of the new program is when you have the highest. It's great to see that our order book is GBP 4.5 billion.

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

That is up on 4.43 weeks earlier than when we announced our results last year. 67% of this year's units are in hand, against 65% in 2026. Again, three weeks earlier. We're in a great place on that. Reflecting the phasing of sales in early 2026, as I've said, we've introduced this tactical. On some sites, there's no discount. We're doing very, very well. I just wanted to make sure on every site, we absolutely get the desired sales rate. If you look now at our sales rate, overall sales rate, 1.42. Last year, 0.59. This is private sales and deals we're doing with housing associations and the like. Housing associations have woken up.

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

They woke up towards the end of last year. They know what's coming. They love the rent convergence. They love the 10-year rent settlement, and they wanna get ahead of the game. The other thing that we're benefiting from in the first 10 weeks, and will continue for the next few weeks, is a lot of housing associations also want to go into the bidding round for the 26-36 program with a good record on the 21-26 program. There's a lot of running around at the present moment in time, and we're getting lots of calls from housing associations over the last four weeks. Actually, what we thought was gonna happen by the end of March, their year-end and the end of the 21-26 program hasn't happened. "Can we do a quick deal with you, Vistry?" A lot of that is happening.

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

We've got a 1.42 sales rate, which we've not seen since announcing the strategy back in 2023, in September. That includes a 40%, as I say, increase in the private sales rate. We expect to deliver, even with all of the discounting, we expect to deliver an increased profit on 2026. The margin will be lowered because of the sales incentives, as we said. The big news is we're now targeting and confident and have bottomed up budgets from the 25 business units. We're targeting in excess of GBP 100 million of cash at the end of the year. Those initiatives that we've put in place are working exceptionally well. Our priorities then. First one, cash generation.

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

We're absolutely 100% laser focused on that. Can I say that since asking the business units to double their sales rate, on average, I'm doing 5 calls a week with a managing director and a sales director of a business unit who hasn't done what I've asked them to do. It's a very, very uncomfortable meeting for the managing director and sales director. They don't wanna do it 2 or 3x. We're absolutely laser focused, very hands-on, on making sure that happens. We're positioned for growth. We've got 25 business units that are capable of doing, with their same geography, in excess of 20,000 units. Vistry Works, with the 3 factories that we've got, is capable of doing up to 10,000 units and probably in excess of 5,000 units for roof trusses.

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

I do know what a roof truss is. Maintaining our operational excellence. Again, when I joined Bovis, which in 2017, which was a 2-year gig, they had some financial issues. What happens normally when you have financial issues is everything else goes, excuse my French, to rackshit. At the time I joined, their star rating was 0. The NHBC were about to kick them off because their build quality was absolutely hopeless. Everything followed on. The business last year has maintained all of our KPIs. We're a very good builder. Customer satisfaction, 5-star. Everything is good. We're in a great position to actually move this business forward with this wave of affordable housing grant that is coming through.

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

We're on track to get to our margin progression targets of 12% and return on capital of 40%. In summary, I would have loved to have come up with this quote, but I have to put this one down to Steven. Vistry, a partnerships business aligned to the scale of the opportunity. You'll all have your own idea of what the opportunity scale is. We would say it's huge, and it's about to come through in the latter half of this year as that program gets announced and housing associations get busy with spending. On that, we will take any questions. Go on, Jake. Wherever you wanna go.

[Rebecca Parker, Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Hi, Rebecca Parker from Goldman Sachs.

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

Hi, Rebecca.

[Rebecca Parker, Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Just wondering on your guidance for year-on-year improvement in volumes and revenue, are you still expecting that 17,000 units that we talked to at the trading update?

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

Yeah.

[Rebecca Parker, Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Yeah. In terms of the incentive levels that you're offering, can you provide us some quantum on what those are and also what types of incentives that you're offering in the market?

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

There's been no real change to the incentives with regards to carpets, turfing, bit of landscaping in a garden. We were doing that anyway. The incentives that I'm talking about over and above that which we announced, or which we asked the business units to get into on week four, would be to do pretty much with pricing. I can't give you a number because, as I say, it is on some sites, it's nothing. On some sites, it's more. What I can tell you is, the numbers that we are guiding, include for that level of discount, whichever it is, and it's different on each individual business unit as well.

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

That guidance has come from the individual business units absolutely knowing that they've got to double their sales rate, and they're absolutely put into their forecast the price they need to do that at. There isn't a simple, "I'd love to say it's X%." It's just not as simple as that, I'm afraid.

[Rebecca Parker, Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Yeah. Last one as well. I think I saw in the presentation that you've become a strategic plus partner as you talked to in the trading update. Can you just remind us of how much increase that allows you to apply for direct funding?

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

We haven't. I don't know where that's come from. We're bidding, and we'd like to become a strategic plus partner, but we're not yet. We're hopeful. From what I understand, a strategic plus partner would get around GBP 700 million. If you go back to what Steven said, our first bid for the 21, 26 program was about GBP 85, and we ended up over GBP 250. If we are successful with being a strategic plus partner, the initial bid would be, Steven, have I got this right? About GBP 700 million.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

Yeah. They've increased the ability to fund any individual partner to a ceiling in, of GBP 700 million. That GBP 700 million will roll over to the following year. It can be replaced as more funds become available. Greg's quite right. We haven't, The bids are in for April. It would be preemptive to think that we're a strategic plus partner.

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

We are the top partner on the 21, 26 program, if that's helpful.

[Rebecca Parker, Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Yeah. Thank you.

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

I'm just letting Jay put it wherever you want.

[Analyst]

Morning, Greg.

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

Hi, Ming.

[Analyst]

Three questions from my side, if I may. First, because you mentioned several times on the Middle East. Can I ask if there's going to be a impact? What kind of impact should we be expecting? Is it labor, raw material, or energy price?

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

I mean, all. I mean, if you take our ground workers, I mean, they are heavily into diesel. There will be, you know, every time there is increases in fuel prices, ground workers will come a-knocking and look for increases. You know, plastic comes directly from it. If this was to continue, and that's an if, none of us actually know. We've got a line within the forecast that or the guidance that we put out this morning. We think there will be an impact. But that impact will have to be seen as we go forward. You could easily, you know, these sorts of things could be a 5% increase on your bill costs.

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

Now, you've already spent some money, you're in fixed price contracts, but these sorts of things can come through. We will just have to wait and see. At the moment, we are confident in what we're saying. We will watch, with interest, as I'm sure everyone will, how long this goes on for and what other pits out there. You know, what I can be confident of is, you know, I think we're building cheaper. I think if there's an increase, we'll still be building cheaper. We might be building more than building at a greater cost than we are at the moment.

[Analyst]

Got it. Clear.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

Wait, maybe I can I just add one thing to that? That's the supply side.

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

Yeah, there's also consumer confidence as well.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

On the supply side, we haven't had, just to be clear, nothing's come up yet. This is just a recognition that things are changing fast. We need to put something in there and be cautious. On the demand side, we've been encouraged that there's been probably greater customer confidence. You know, so much of our open market demand comes down to customer confidence. It does feel like that's moving in the right direction. Of course, it's fragile, and there could be knock-on impacts just on customer confidence, whether it's cost of living, people having to pay more for their fuel at the pump, or whether it's, you know, potentially mortgage rates or rates not coming down as fast as we expect. We don't know really, but it could be a demand side as well as a supply side impact.

[Analyst]

Got it. Clear.

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

The flip side to all of that as well, which would be a positive to us, if those sorts of things happened, that means that house builders will be building less. We're already in contract, so we would expect to get some benefits from that as well, 'cause a lot of what we're doing is already in contract. We should benefit from that to an extent.

[Analyst]

Thank you. Second question is on the land sales.

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

Mm-hmm.

[Analyst]

Because I think Tim just mentioned what remains to be a core part of sales. What kind of level should we be expecting this year versus last year? It's going to be higher, lower?

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

I'm not entirely sure whether it's gonna be higher or lower. I think we'd expect it to be three digits again this year. Whether it's as much as 180, we don't know yet. It'll partly depend on where we are with planning processes and how quickly sites go through the planning.

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

I don't expect the land market to be anything other than soft, and that will come into it as well.

[Analyst]

Okay. last one from me-

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

Yeah.

[Analyst]

is, I think you also mentioned on this, inventory reduction effort, you will be working together with the JV. I wonder, does that mean your JV partners is also happy with the strategy that probably the margin will be lower?

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

Yeah, because we've discussed it with them, and they were a valued partner, and we're saying we need to sell quicker than we currently are, and they absolutely get that. Yeah, they're on board, and we would obviously have to get approval to do that, where we're on a JV. I don't think we've had any. I'm looking around the room, Adam?

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

No.

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

No, I don't think we've had any pushback from any of our housing association partners. Hi.

[Aynsley Lammin, Equity Research Analyst at Investec]

Thanks. Aynsley Lammin from Investec. Just two from me, please. Maybe just coming back to the question on kind of average hit to, or reduction in prices, average hit to margin, however you want to look at it. If you look at the full year and your guidance, kind of what's acceptable in terms of the margin hit, in terms of your discounting on pricing, and what do you expect the margin to be versus that 8.5% as we kind of see today?

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

What's acceptable is whatever the answer is. The answer is from the 25 business units is a profit greater than 2025. We want to sell units, and we want to sell units at pace and get a step ahead of what I believe how the house builders will follow. There is some instances of you can see that already around about the place if you study the websites. We wanna get ahead of the game, and that's what we're doing. The second part of that. The actual discount level, again, it's how long is a piece of string. In some places and in some businesses, it's very little. In other places, it's more.

[Aynsley Lammin, Equity Research Analyst at Investec]

Okay. I guess, so the motivation 'cause the other house builders are talking about kind of improving sales rates. You yourself seem to also be saying that the private open market's actually been quite good?

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

well-

[Aynsley Lammin, Equity Research Analyst at Investec]

The motivation for that increase or discounting, is it more kind of balance sheet and cash, or is it because you believe the market's about to fall over and the other house builders will be chasing sales? Not quite clear on that.

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

It's balance sheet and cash. I also believe that, on the basis of no Help to Buy coming in during the course of this year, I've been around for a long time. If you're a public house builder and you're selling at 0.5, 0.6, that doesn't really work. You know, your prelims stop, start. I think there will be pressure on the house builders. Again, if you look at the house builders, their balance sheets have, they might, you know, it wasn't that long ago, they were all operating, or a lot of them with GBP 1 billion in the bank. Those days have gone. Most of them are borrowing money now from banks at various times of the year, maybe not at the, maybe not at the period ends.

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

At some point, I think they will have to look at things and go, you know, "How do we... If we're hanging around for Help to Buy, is it gonna come in? Yes? No?" Maybe it will in due course, but I don't think it's any time soon, and I think that will drive pressure for them to actually sell units quicker. That's my, that's what I'm paid to do. That's what I think. Rightly or wrongly, that might turn out to be case. It's twofold. What's gonna happen and balance sheet.

[Emily Biddulph, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

morning. Emily Biddulph from Barclays. I've got two, please.

[Emily Biddulph, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

Firstly, you talked about margins on newer sites coming through being stronger. Can we just understand the price assumptions you have built into those margins? Do they assume that the current discounting that you're doing is the ongoing spot price for the duration of projects, or are you assuming the current pricing is a sort of short period of discounting that unwinds to support the margin?

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

It's the latter. We're assuming we've been very prudent with the prices that we've put in. We generally start a site at a higher price than what we allowed at the time of the land acquisition. That's the first thing I would say. Yes, we are assuming that over a period of time, we will push prices back up, that will be sometime during the course of this year, and certainly not in the next two or three months.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

I think it's also worth pointing out that the incentive impact is more likely to be on more mature sites. Sites that are nearing the end rather than sites that we've just started. That tends to be where we've got the slower moving stock.

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

Yeah

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

that we particularly wanna focus on. That's where the, you know, more marginal effect would come.

[Emily Biddulph, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

Okay. Just to be clear, the discounting is mostly focused on particular sites with slower moving stock and-

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

Oh, definitely.

[Emily Biddulph, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

therefore you're saying.

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

Yeah. Where they're selling quickly, there's no need to, well, there's no concern.

[Emily Biddulph, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

Secondly, if the outlook for this year is worse and the market is weaker here, sort of what other levers are that you can pull on cash? Is there more that you can do on WIP? Because if you're doing that already, can you go lower on WIP? Or is there anything else that can come out? If affordable funding does start to flow, will the business consume working capital? Does the current debt position constrain growth into a slightly better affordable market?

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

No, because the affordable housing market is forward funded. It would affect growth if we were a pure house builder, 'cause obviously that's where you put your money. With housing associations, you know, we would like to think we are paid when we buy the land, and we're paid more than we've actually done during the course of the month, which helps then offset some of the private stuff on the same site where that's an investment. As Stephen just said earlier, we would expect to do well on the 26-36 affordable housing program. I think Stephen's just said when we buy the site, we would get 40% of the grant up front and then 35% when we actually start on site. That is cash helpful.

[Emily Biddulph, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

Those sites you talked about where you currently have infrastructure that's sort of tied up where you've had to sort of fund the private infrastructure.

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

Yeah. I mean, during the course of.

[Emily Biddulph, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

Those exceptions

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

during the course of last year, I wanted to bring Tim's made the point, and I'm very happy to say we wanted to bring WIP down last year. It didn't dramatically go up, but we certainly didn't bring it down because the private selling market just was not that good for anybody, including Vistry. Of course, we were hoping to get a much more injection from housing associations because we thought, you know, we thought there was gonna be some really good numbers on the 2636 program, but which there has been. The delay in announcing it and the delay in it coming through has been slightly disappointing.

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

Yes, they did bring forward GBP 2 billion of the GBP 39 million as a bridge to add to the 26-36, sorry, 21-26 program. We've got some money due, but they're not giving any of that GBP 2 billion out until April. We will get and be able to draw down what are we, you know, a decent sum of money in April from stuff we've already spent because that bridge funding, it's there, and it's gonna be paid for us. We've got that acknowledged. We would have liked to have had that during the course of last year. We'll actually get it April and May onwards.

[Emily Biddulph, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

Thanks, guys.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

Sorry. Just one more thing. Addressing your point, Emily, about cash levers in the down turn. Obviously, we can choose what how long we go with the discounting side of things. One of the levers that we've got that house builders don't have is that we can flip from private selling into more affordable selling. That's actually cash advantageous because they give us the cash up front. There may be a profit impact, but I think it's more likely we're putting more emphasis on the impact being on profit rather than on cash because we've got those levers on cash that we can pull in either scenario.

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

The other thing I can say to you, to everyone about being practical about this, you know, when I said I want to increase the sales rate, the actual words I use to the individual business units is if you go back to 2024 and 2025, week one, we didn't sell as many units on the private side as we wanted to. Not because they're not very good, because of the market. Week two, we didn't sell as many. Week three, we didn't sell as many. It's a bit too late. We still haven't sold as many. I know what we'll do. Let's do a bulk sale, and we'll sell a bulk sale to a PRS provider or to housing association.

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

What I can assure you is what we're doing at the present moment in time, whatever the discount we're giving away will be a lot less than we would inevitably got to by doing a bulk sale at some point down the year with all the pressure that comes from that to half and full year. This is using experience. Let's crack on and deal with it now rather than kidding ourselves, kicking the can down the road as other house builders are. You know? Be in no doubt, we're getting calls all the time from our partners saying, "Oh, I've just had so and so on. They're doing a Vistry." What do you mean? Well, I've never heard from them. Then they just want to do a bulk sale. They want to sell their show homes. They want to do this.

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

Everyone's at it. I'm just trying to beat that. Whatever we sell to Mr. and Mrs. Smith will be advantageous to doing a deal with a long-term partner or a PRS provider. What happens to the screen? Go on, Glynis.

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Glynis Johnson, Jefferies. Three if I may. The first one, just in terms of land. Your owned land, the percentage of your land bank has actually gone up slightly. You've obviously referenced some of these, you know, bigger sites. Can you maybe just talk us through? You gave us an example of one of the big sites.

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

Yeah.

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

When does the return on capital employed start getting to the 40%? You talked about being very confident getting above.

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

It's a 10, 15 year site.

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

Yeah.

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Yeah.

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

We haven't put a time to it, Glynis, but it'll be, you know, if you're asking me, I would say 2029, 2030.

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Okay. Second one just in terms of oversight on the incentives. You've talked a lot about wanting to double, you know, the sales rate, but what is the oversight on the discount? When does it come across your desk, across Tim's desk?

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

It does-

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Does it get tied into margin?

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

It doesn't come across my desk. We've got three executive chairs. They will sign off everything.

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

I guess what I'm looking for is some reassurance that it's not gonna impact the site margins and therefore previously accounted profits.

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

No. We've just gone through an audit accordingly.

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Last one.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

Just to be clear, the site margins will be impacted if the expectation of the overall revenues from that site are gonna drop. Now that's all reflected prospectively and that's how our accounting works. You don't go back and review what's happened before, but you're constantly changing the site margin up or down depending on your expectations of revenues and costs. This is why there will be a slight reduction in the margin this year because the absolute revenues on those sites will drop as a result of the discounting.

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Have you, for example, taken land sales on those sites previously at a margin which is not gonna match the revised view of site margin?

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

I would suggest on 95% no.

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Okay.

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

It's With the land sales were predominantly on plan new sites as we bought them.

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Okay. The last one. 50 standard housing types seems like quite a lot, but you have a whole range of brands.

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

Yeah.

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

Can you maybe just, you know, give us a little bit of context about, you know, why 50 is the right number, why that works from an efficiency standpoint when you kind of got a Ford Model T, you know.

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

Yeah.

[Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies]

needing a factory of just repeatability.

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

You, you're right, Glynis. It is more than I would have liked, but you've got different housing associations. We've discussed it with housing associations. They have different requirements amongst themselves. We've got two brands, Bovis Linden and Countryside, which adds to it. Then on top of that, you've also got Future Homes Standard coming through, and you've got different local authorities from a planning perspective interpreting that in different ways. It's 50. I would very much hope that, and I'm looking over there, I'd like to think that, you know, less than 20 will make up 80% of everything we do going forward. That would be our assumption, but 50 is there. Will?

[Will Jones, Partner, Equity Research, Construction and Building Materials at Rothschild & Co Redburn]

Thanks. Will Jones at Rothschild & Co Redburn. First, just returning to the flexibility around price and margin. Is this just limited to open market, or are you being flexible?

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

Limited, limited to open market.

[Will Jones, Partner, Equity Research, Construction and Building Materials at Rothschild & Co Redburn]

Yeah. Okay. Partly linked to that, but when we think about the difference in gross margin between PRS and additional affordable, as you shift your mix, how would you frame that to us?

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

I would say that PRS providers are buying a product that they will eventually, and in not too distant future, sell, and they are very commercial people. A housing association or local authority is buying a product that they will never sell. I'm pretty happy with being diplomatic, you know, doing more with housing associations than PRS providers. We'll continue to work with both, obviously.

[Will Jones, Partner, Equity Research, Construction and Building Materials at Rothschild & Co Redburn]

Thanks. Second, just around cash flow and the moving parts for this year, whether you'd call out anything, Tim, to us on that front. A note from the back, I think there's GBP 250 million more land credits or obligations this year than last. That's obviously one negative start, but presumably WIP and others.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

I mean, not necessarily a negative start, 'cause on the land creditors, it's our strategy to defer payments. We will continue to defer payments this year. We'll pay for last year's land, but we won't pay for this year's land. But I think probably the land creditor balance will come down slightly during the year. There will be a slight headwind in terms of cash generation from land creditors, maybe GBP 100 million, something up to that sort of level. Obviously in cash, it was just a broad bridge. We've got the profit coming in. We've got the WIP reduction coming down. Against that, we've got the tax. We've got the share buybacks. We've got the fire safety, and we've got that land creditor.

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

Overall, to get to, you know, Greg's target of GBP 100 million, that's a GBP 250 million reduction in WIP and lands to deliver that.

[Will Jones, Partner, Equity Research, Construction and Building Materials at Rothschild & Co Redburn]

Thanks. Just to check as we think about the shift, not modest shift in strategy maybe today against the balance sheet. Is there any signal here that your comfort levels around the balance sheet and what you want average net debt to be have changed at all? Are you happy that the operational focus and the lack of distributions can get you there?

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

I think no change. We've said before that we want to bring down average net debt steadily over time. I think what this, these actions signal that we're not satisfied that we're making enough progress. The end game is still the same. We just wanna get there quicker and cognizant we didn't make as much progress last year as we wanted to.

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

Yeah. Chris?

[Chris Millington, Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Morning. Chris Millington at Deutsche. Firstly, just gotta ask really about succession planning and kind of what's in tow at the moment? What's the expectation of timetable for both the chair and the CEO role? I'll go one at a time.

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

Okay. Well, the CEO role, you know, I'm will be definitely here till March next year. If it goes on a bit longer than that, I would, of course, be flexible on that. The process has started. We've been discussing it for quite some time. This is not a shock to the board. This has been on the cards for some time. That process is well on, started, and moving in the right direction, and we're very confident we'll be able to do it in those timescales. I've said I'd like to, you know, I like to do things orderly, and a chairman should stand down at an AGM.

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

The AGM is in May. The next AGM then will obviously be in May 2027, which by then I will be a special advisor as opposed to being on board full-time. That's the expectation. On the chairman succession, we have a number of options, and we just wanted to give ourselves another week or two to get that right. Again, it's all in hand. Nothing to see here.

[Chris Millington, Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Got you. Very clear. Next one's just about affordable housing funding. You know, it slips like a lot of things with this government. Do you think there's much of a danger it doesn't land in Q3? I mean, what could happen to kind of slow the progress there?

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

The bidding opened at the end of February, and there are two routes that people can bid for funding. You can bid to be a strategic partner and a strategic partner plus a second category that's just been introduced this year. The outcome of that, there'll be a process of discussion, all bids having to be in by the 2nd week of April. This is where you're going for this sort of GBP 700 million tote would be the maximum anybody would be awarded. That will then prompt some discussions with those bidders. I would expect in June and July we'll get some siting, and there'll be an announcement in late summer. We move forward with confidence, I think it's fair to say.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

The second aspect of looking for funds is you're not a strategic partner. You go for individual, what's called Continuous Market Engagement grant awards. That's essentially, you can knock on the door and say, "I'd like you to fund this scheme, please." That process takes 6-8 weeks. Homes England have already received bids under Continuous Market Engagement at the end of April. You can work out the chronology of that. People will be getting funds, sorry, at the end of February. People will be getting funds during March and April under that Continuous Market Engagement route and looking to commit them.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

My view is it will all wash through over the next, over the next four or five months and everybody will be able to share the visibility of what they've been awarded and that will start to be implemented. The interesting thing for me is, and my point with the slide of inflection, we are past the point of that dampening progress. Yeah. Whilst the visibility of what everybody is going to be awarded as funds is not yet there, housing associations have reworked their business plans, putting into effect introducing the assumptions following the government's policy decisions. They're already now out there looking to trade, looking to commission. That process is underway.

[Chris Millington, Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

That's helpful. Thanks, Stephen. Look, last one's really just I suppose it relates to previous questions, and I may get a similar answer, but what's the right capital employed and kind of what do you think the right WIP balance is? You know, last year you were talking about GBP 200 release. It went up a bit. You know, where do you think you could get to there?

[Tim Lawlor, CFO at Vistry Group]

Well, over time, you know, our direction is to get to 40% ROCE. Really to get to that in the time period that we're talking about, the next 5 years or so, we need to get capital employed down sub GBP 2 billion. Right? You know, how we're gonna get there, we're gonna keep acquiring new sites with that 40% being a minimum hurdle weight for new acquisitions, and others will work their way out, and we'll start to leverage some of these economies of scale as the volume builds up. That's the sort of level, and it's, you know, the areas we've got to try and take it out of is WIP, land, and joint venture investment.

[Chris Millington, Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Clyde?

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

Yes.

[Clyde Lewis, Deputy Head of Research and Head of Building Sector Research at Peel Hunt]

Thanks.t. I think I've got three, if I may. Stephen, you put up the sort of or I think maybe Greg did, the sort of mix for affordable homes. Obviously, your share went up with PRS going down. What happened within local authorities within that part as opposed to housing associations? Are you working now with more local authorities, and is that starting to ramp up?

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Clyde Lewis, Deputy Head of Research and Head of Building Sector Research at Peel Hunt]

as a share of the total?

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

I'll deal with that part. Yeah. Yeah, local authorities, we are engaging with more. We are doing more work. We have sustained a pretty good platform over the years. Particularly our footprint in London has been nearly all with local authorities. It's huge, hugely beneficial long-term relationships for delivery with local authorities in London. Outside of London, you know, we're working with local authorities in Cornwall. We're working with local authorities in Manchester. Working with local authorities in Gateshead. The geographic distribution is good. Those local authorities, of course, benefit from the policy changes the government has made. Rent convergence, 10-year rent settlement, ability to bid for grant, those are all benefits that local authorities will have within their business plans for their own stock and their own commissioning.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

I do expect local authorities to play an increasing role going forward because they've got that, the additional capacity within their business plans to do that.

[Clyde Lewis, Deputy Head of Research and Head of Building Sector Research at Peel Hunt]

Okay. Thank you. Greg, the 40%, the uplift that you're talking about for sort of year on.

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

Sales. Yeah

[Clyde Lewis, Deputy Head of Research and Head of Building Sector Research at Peel Hunt]

for the sales rate, how is that built? Has that still very much got more momentum in it? Is that 40% gonna continue to increase or do you think that's the.

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

I think 40% is about what we are looking for. There or thereabout. Yeah. It was 35% two weeks ago, it's building momentum because obviously marketing and everything takes a little bit of time. 40% will be about the level that I'm happy with and the level I would expect to go forward. It doesn't need to get to 50 or 45. 40 is absolutely fine. We're selling at. We don't give private sales rates, and we're not. We've said it's up, we're selling at sales rates I've not seen in the 9 years I've been at Vistry Group.

[Clyde Lewis, Deputy Head of Research and Head of Building Sector Research at Peel Hunt]

Okay. Are you expecting to see a competitive response that might dull perhaps 40%?

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

I'm expecting to see it, we've allowed for that. If we're, you know, Vistry East Anglia, and we're doing what we're doing, you know, that might affect a few sites in East Anglia. We are Vistry, and we're everywhere. Yes, I would expect to see some increases in competition.

[Clyde Lewis, Deputy Head of Research and Head of Building Sector Research at Peel Hunt]

Okay.

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

It's no different than, GT back in 2008, 2009. We're selling aggressively. Others weren't. In the end, they did.

[Clyde Lewis, Deputy Head of Research and Head of Building Sector Research at Peel Hunt]

Adrian

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

Go on.

[Adrian Kirby, Equity Research Analyst at Liberum]

Kirby, Liberum. A few if I may. In terms of the GBP 39 billion affordable homes grant, we're getting clarity for September. What proportion of that GBP 39 billion will it be allocated? Will there be presumably a proportion sort of left floating for later allocation?

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

Continuous Engagement. Yeah.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

Yeah. Well, we don't know, put simply. That's a conversation that Homes England will be having with the Treasury in terms of the rate at which that is deployed. Certainly, they will be making allocations across the 10-year program. Yeah? How that's then structured and how that's pulled down and how that's annualized is a conversation that each of the bidders will have with Homes England, and then Homes England have a corresponding conversation with Treasury. We're not aware of that yet. We do know that the weighting in the bids, there are several things weighted. Are you using MMC? Are you able to deliver quickly? Are you supported by local authorities? There's a range of things that contribute to a non-financial appraisal of your bid.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

One of them is the ability to deliver within the lifetime of this parliament, i.e., over the first 3 years of the program. That is given a positive weighting. With Vistry, with our land bank, with our relationship with RPs, with our frameworks and that forward visibility, you, as you'd expect, we will score highly on that. I would expect a significant amount of what we bid for and receive will be deployed within 3 years.

[Adrian Kirby, Equity Research Analyst at Liberum]

To link to that ability to deliver, when you look in terms of the number of your average sites you're gonna be building on this year, next, can you perhaps give some guidance in terms of the, you know, the number of individual sites? I'm thinking of triangulating it back to that 1.42 unit sales rate that you currently have got.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

we've got, In terms of outlets, we're about 180 outlets at the moment.

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

Yeah, there's one.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

On terms of build units, we're about 300

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

300, yeah. Over 300, yeah.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

Yeah.

[Adrian Kirby, Equity Research Analyst at Liberum]

Oh, okay.

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

It's, building is significantly above sales outlets, obviously, because we are building after we've after we've finished selling and building before we've started selling. There are also sites where we don't sell because they're fully fully partner funded.

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

Okay.

[Ami Galla, Director and Equity Analyst at Citi]

Ami Galla from Citi. A few follow-ups from me.

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

Sorry, I can't hear that.

[Ami Galla, Director and Equity Analyst at Citi]

Sorry. Ami Galla from Citi. A few follow-ups from me. The first one was on the discounts. Can you give us some color regionally if that is concentrated in a few locations, or is it across most of the sites across the country?

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

It's concentrated, I would suggest, in a few, in a few places.

[Ami Galla, Director and Equity Analyst at Citi]

Can you talk regionally about where should we look at in terms of the sort of, pinch points?

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

London, South East would be the biggest areas.

[Ami Galla, Director and Equity Analyst at Citi]

Okay, that's helpful. The second one was on the land bank margin. Can you comment a bit about where does the current land bank gross margin sit, and how has that shifted over the last year?

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

Tim, you got that?

[Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration at Vistry Group]

The land bank margin is slightly above the overall group margin. Still lower than we would like it to be 'cause we've still got the impacts of some of the old legacy sites working its way through. It's sort of mid-teens.

[Ami Galla, Director and Equity Analyst at Citi]

Maybe just a technical one on the forward sales position. Assuming that step up that you've seen from December is largely driven by the open market sales.

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

No, no.

[Ami Galla, Director and Equity Analyst at Citi]

um-

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

It's not. It's helped by open market sales, but it's also housing association entering into the market again for 2 reasons. One, 3 reasons, actually. Rent convergence, rent settlements is reason 1. Reason 2 is housing associations can see, and they're talking to Homes England, the GLA, and they know what kind of money they're gonna be getting, and the government are putting huge pressure on them to actually start building. 3, shortfalls in their programs. They've actually now gone, you know, March is their year-end, that happens every year, obviously. This not only a year-end, it's the end of the 2021-2026 program. Homes England have been specific, saying the people that will do the best in the 2026-2036 program are those that deliver well in the 2021-2026 program.

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

A number of housing associations out there are a little bit short, and that has caused a huge amount of activity for us over the last six or seven weeks. Three areas, but it's not just private.

[Ami Galla, Director and Equity Analyst at Citi]

maybe in terms of the technicality, is that largely tiered for 2026, or is there a tail into 2027?

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

No, that's mainly targeted for 2026. Yeah.

[Ami Galla, Director and Equity Analyst at Citi]

Thank you.

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

Yeah. I'm getting told to do that, by Kate, unless it's just me. No. Okay, thank you very much. Have a good day. Thanks for coming. Cheers.

Participants

Executives

• Greg Fitzgerald, Executive Chair and CEO
• Stephen Teagle, Chief Executive, Partnerships and Regeneration
• Tim Lawlor, CFO

Analysts

• Adrian Kirby, Equity Research Analyst at Liberum
• Ami Galla, Director and Equity Analyst at Citi
• Aynsley Lammin, Equity Research Analyst at Investec
• Chris Millington, Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank
• Clyde Lewis, Deputy Head of Research and Head of Building Sector Research at Peel Hunt
• Emily Biddulph, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays
• Glynis Johnson, Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies
• Rebecca Parker, Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs
• Will Jones, Partner, Equity Research, Construction and Building Materials at Rothschild & Co Redburn
• Analyst