Help me - I bought these a month ago - when they were being tipped all over the place. Since then the sector has gone down the swannie - should cut my losses (13%) or hold on for the long haul?

StockMarketWire.com
Persimmon has hiked its H1 pretax profit by 29% to £352.3m, from £272.8m, the robust performance driven by a clear focus on meeting market demand.

Revenue was up 12% to £1.49bn, from£1.33bn. Legal completions rose 6% to 7238 new homes sold, from 6855. Average selling price was up 6% to £205,762.

"Persimmon's robust trading performance in the first half of 2016 was driven by our continued focus on meeting market demand to deliver controlled sustainable growth," said CEO Jeff Fairburn in a statement.

"The Group's strong cash generation has supported further disciplined land investment embedding value for the future," he said.

"While the result of the EU Referendum has created increased economic uncertainty, customer interest since then has been robust with visitor numbers to our sites around 20% ahead year on year.

"Our private sale reservation rate since 1 July is currently 17% ahead of the same period last year. The Group is now trading through the traditionally slower summer weeks but customer demand remains encouraging and we anticipate a good autumn sales season.

"We are confident that our long term strategic focus will continue to deliver strong returns for our shareholders."

HIGHLIGHTS:
- Further expansion of underlying operating margin* to 23.8% (2015: 20.5%), an increase of 330bps

- Return on average capital employed increased by 29% to 35.6% (2015: 27.5%)

- 7,108 plots of new land secured in the period bringing consented land bank to 93,519 plots

- Continued success in securing planning consent for the Group's strategic land bank with 2,856 plots converted in the period, 40% of the new plots acquired in the period

- Net free cash generation of £229.9m in the period (2015: £190.7m)

- Net cash of £462.0m at 30 June 2016 (2015: £278.0m)

- Basic earnings per share increased 19% to 92.0p (2015: 77.3p)

- Current forward sales 2% ahead at £1.75bn (2015: £1.71bn)

- Fourth payment of surplus capital under the Capital Return Plan of £338.3m (110p per share) paid 1 April 2016.

StockMarketWire.com
Persimmon said trading over the summer weeks immediately following the UK's non-binding referendum to quit the EU was encouraging, with the number of customers visiting our sites remaining well ahead of last year.

"Thereafter, with the start of the autumn selling season, customer activity strengthened in line with the traditional seasonality of the market," the company said in a trading update for the period July 1 to Nov. 1.

"Our private sales rate in the period since we reported our half year results on 23 August 2016 has been 19% ahead of last year, representing a continuation of the stronger sales rate experienced through the summer weeks.

"We are now fully sold up for the current year and have c. £757 million of forward sales reserved beyond 2016, an increase of 4% on the same point last year (2015: £726 million).

"The market has continued to benefit from resilient consumer confidence and strong lender support. The reduction in the bank base rate in August has resulted in more attractive mortgage products further supporting affordability.

"Mortgage interest rates remain compelling, especially for first time buyers utilising the Help to Buy shared equity scheme. Pricing remains firm across our regional markets."

Going like a train today

Persimmon plc announces the following update ahead of its Final Results for the year ended 31 December 2016, which will be released on 27 February 2017.

Revenues for 2016 of £3.14bn were 8% higher than the prior year (2015: £2.90bn) with legal completion volumes increasing by 599 new homes to 15,171 (2015: 14,572). The Group's average selling price increased by 4% to c. £206,700 (2015: £199,127).

Sales reservations through the autumn season were strong with healthy customer demand for new homes. Buying a new-build home remains a compelling choice supported by competitive mortgage offers which continue to make a new home purchase very affordable. The Group's private sales rate for the second half of the year was 15% ahead of the prior year and second half legal completion volumes of 7,933 were 695 stronger than for the first half of the year (H1: 7,238).

We have continued to focus on disciplined high quality growth to achieve sustainable market share in our regional markets. The two new house building businesses we opened at the start of 2016 based in Perth, Scotland and Launceston, Cornwall have made good progress delivering over 650 new homes in their first year of operation. On 2 January 2017 we launched a further new business based in Mansfield, north of Nottingham, to support the delivery of increased volumes of new homes in this regional market. The value of our forward sales at 31 December 2016 of c. £1,230m is 12% ahead of the prior year (2015: £1,103m).

The Group successfully opened 255 new development sites across the UK during the year and is building on all sites which have an implementable planning consent. We expect our gross margin in the second half will have improved further due to a combination of the continued reduction in our land cost recoveries associated with opening new sites, and the continued strong control over development costs.

During the year we acquired c. 18,700 plots of new land in 83 locations with good deferred terms. We continue to see good opportunities to acquire additional land whilst remaining mindful of the risks associated with the uncertainty arising from the UK's decision to leave the EU. We continue to work hard to bring forward opportunities from the Group's strategic land portfolio which will add to the quality of the Group's asset platform. We expect local authorities to continue to progress their plans to support growth in housing delivery in line with the National Planning Policy Framework.

The Group held cash balances of c. £913m at 31 December 2016 (2015: £570m).

Trading update.

Housebuilder Persimmon put together an excellent foundation to its financial year, reporting resilient consumer confidence and strong momentum moving into the second half. The FTSE 100 group expanded revenues 12% to £1.66bn as the volume of new homes sold grew 8% to 7,794 and it was able to hoist average selling prices 3.5% to £213,000.

StockMarketWire.com
House building company Persimmon said three of its executives had decided to cut the size of their long-term incentive payments.

Chief executive Jeff Fairburn and chief financial officer Mike Killoran decided to reduce their overall entitlement by a number of shares equal to 50% of their entitlement.

They had also decided to extend until 2021 the holding period of certain entitlements.

Managing director Dave Jenkinson, meanwhile, decided to reduce his overall entitlement by 50% of the shares subject to awards granted to him since being promoted to the board.

'These decisions by the executives have been welcomed and fully supported by the remuneration committee, which has also noted Jeff Fairburn's intention to donate a substantial proportion of his total reward to charity,' Persimmon said.

I sold my shares back in December for a good profit, when the original news about how damaging the long-term incentive payments were going to be for the company. I don't know if the 50% is going to be enough...... The news from the company is otherwise positive ahead of the final results for 2017 due out next week.

For me the jury is still out if this is a good investment or not, even long term

Well I did not expect this - up 11% so far this morning 270p. Not worth getting into, as that is the proposed dividend "spent".

I guess by giving out such good results, it drowned out the Chairman's resignation!

Psn going well. Had April div and it's still climbing
Got another 110p div to come June.
Nice little earner rodney.

As announced on 27 February 2018, additional payments under the Plan of 125p per share will be paid over the next three years in late March/early April each year. The first of these additional payments of £389 million, was paid to shareholders as an interim dividend on 29 March 2018. At the same time the Board recommended that the scheduled return of 110p per share, or c. £345 million, will be paid to shareholders on 2 July 2018 as a final dividend. With the scheduled payment on 2 July 2018, the total value of the capital returned by that date of £2.22 billion will be £1.36 billion greater than that originally planned at launch in 2012.

 

The additional payments over the next three years will bring the total value of the Plan to £13.00 per share, more than double the £6.20 per share original commitment made by the Board in 2012. The total value of the Plan is now c. £4.07 billion.

 

Total shareholder returns to date from the launch of the Group's new strategy in 2012 now exceed 500%.

 

The Board remains confident of the future prospects of the Group.  

 

We will provide a further report in our Trading Update on Thursday 5 July 2018.

 

 

CEO resigns https://www.moneyam.com/action/news/showArticle?id=6197516

After the TV interview he refused to do on his pay it was the only solution. The issue was never going to go away no matter how much his comms team were going to try and shut it down.

Soooo glad i sold out at £28 instead
of taking the dividend.

that was back in june ..... but of course if you had re-bought in late october, you would be rubbing your hands gleefully

Housebuilder Persimmon said it expected 2018 pre-tax profits to be modestly ahead of current market consensus, having benefited from new developments opened through the year. Total group revenues of £3.74bn were 4% higher as new housing revenues increased by 4% to £3.55bn and legal completion volumes increased by 406 new homes to 16,449 against 16,043 in 2017.