Henry Boot has doubled its profit, helped by rising residential land sales.
The land to construction firm announced revenue of £230.6m for 2021, up 3.7% from 2020’s £222.4m. Profit before tax rose by 105% from £17.1m to £35.1m, while earnings per share increased by 135% to 21.2p.
The profit falls short of the £49.1m recorded in 2019 before the pandemic.
The land promoter said it had sold 3,008 plots during the year, up from 2,000 in 2020. At an average gross profit of £7,820 per plot, that equates to £23.5m profit. This too was an increase on the previous year, at £6,456 profit per plot, or a total of £13m.
Chief executive Tim Roberts said: “Strong demand within our three key markets of industrial and logistics, residential, and urban development has helped us to achieve a good set of results.
The firm said strategic investments had taken it from having £27m cash in the bank, to being £43.5m in debt.
Roberts added: “By continued investment in our significant pipeline of opportunities and using our strong balance sheet, we have achieved material growth in the business and secured attractive returns for our shareholders. While there are pressures facing the economy and the industry, particularly inflation and supply restrictions, we continue to manage these effectively. We have also made a very good start to the year, building on the strong momentum across the group, with high levels of forward sales in land and housebuilding, further leasing of our developments and a full order book in construction.”
The firm has increased its committed development programme from £85m to £277m GDV, while increasing its development pipeline to £1.4bn, of which it has a £1.1bn share. Three-quarters of the pipeline is focused on industrial and logistics development, with approximately 1m sq ft under way.
Henry Boot said its proposed final dividend of 3.63p would be a 10% increase on last year, bringing the total dividend for the year to 6.05p.
Last month, chair Jamie Boot confirmed that he will step down from the business in May.
Boot joined the company in 1979 and was appointed to the board six years later. He was group managing director from 1986 to 2015 and was appointed chairman in 2016.
He will be replaced by non-executive director Peter Mawson, group chief executive of Donaldson and chief executive of the West Northamptonshire Development Corporation.
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