Persimmon is confident that it can repeat last year’s £1bn profit, despite having to spend more on building quality and customer service.
The FTSE 100 housebuilder said that it expects to report pre-tax profits in line with the market consensus of £1.04bn, down from £1.09bn in February 2019.
In a year-end trading update for 2019, Persimmon revealed that selling houses at a later stage of construction, to fix “poor workmanship” and prevent them from being “potentially unsafe, had resulted in a 4% fall in the number sold to 15,855. The average selling price was £215,700, in line with the year before. Revenue fell 2.4% to £3.7bn year-on-year. At the end of December Persimmon’s order book stood at £1.36bn, down from £1.4bn a year earlier.
It is due to announce full-year results on February 27.
