Taylor Wimpey shares fell 7% to 48.25p as the housebuilder reported a £1.5bn loss – three times its market capitalisation.
The good news was that it was still in “constructive dialogue” to restructure its £1.7bn debt. The bad news was that there were combined further writedowns and collapsing margins. The developer wrote off £816m of the value of non-tangible assets that appeared on its balance sheet at the time of Taylor Woodrow and George Wimpey merger last spring.
Sales of £1.9bn, against £2.7bn for the combined group last time, produced pre-tax profits of £4.3m. Last time round, the pre-tax figure was £140.9m for the comparable period. Taylor Wimpey said it saw some hope in the UK, with sales in the past six weeks only 25-30% lower than last year.
28/08/08 Financial Times 18
Times 36, 38
Daily Telegraph B1, B6
Guardian 1, 27
Independent 40, 46
