London & Quadrant Housing Trust has increased its debt facilities by £300m to take its available liquidity to more than £800m and help it mitigate the impact of Covid-19.
The housing association has also postponed £300m of capital expenditure and decided to not to proceed with £66m of non-essential capital expenditure during its current financial year.
In its latest trading statement, for the year ended 31 March, L&Q added that it was also making a £3m bad-debt provision.
L&Q reported that it had received 957 payment deferral requests from its residents on a portfolio of 113,525 units, while its rolling four-week arrears nudged up from 5.04% to 5.43%, equating to a £3m increase in arrears.
It completed 47% of its projected residential sales, achieving 50% of its forecasted profits.
EBITDA for its 2019/20 full-year results increased from £236m last year to £302m at the end of March, although turnover slipped by 2.4% to £914m. Its operating surplus also fell by 3.3% to £715m. Net debt stood at £5,4bn, up from £4.9bn last year.
L&Q had completed 2,439 residential units by the end of March, including 1,188 units for social housing tenures.
At the end of March, L&Q said that, including joint ventures, it had 526 unsold completed units with a projected value of £133m. Its forward order book, excluding joint ventures, comprised 45 exchanged units with projected revenue of £6m and 143 reservations with projected revenue of £36m.
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