Having taken a plunge many house builders are now possibly on the up again.

Trading Statement.

Sales and profits growth

In line with management expectations, the Group legally completed 1,901 homes in 2010 (2009: 1,803 homes), an increase of 5%, of which 1,592 were private homes (2009: 1,527 homes) and 309 were social homes (2009: 276 social homes). The Group's average sales price in 2010 was 160,700, 4% higher than the equivalent of 154,600 in 2009. This increase was driven by growth in the Group's average private sales price in 2010 to 172,400 from 165,500 in 2009.


Strong balance sheet; land acquisitions to fuel growth

The cash position of the Group as at 31 December 2010 remained strong, with net cash of 52 million, having started 2010 with 113 million of net cash. The overall cash outflow was contributed to by payments during the year of c.138 million relating to land investment, with strong operating cash inflows pre-land expenditure of c.93 million.


Return to dividend

The Group has delivered early success with its growth strategy and the Board is confident in its further delivery, based on current market conditions. Given this confidence, the Board has decided to recommence the payment of dividends to shareholders. Based on the anticipated 2010 profits and the Group's robust balance sheet position, the Group will declare a dividend for 2010, subject to approval by shareholders at the 2011 Annual General Meeting, which will be paid in May 2011.

Gone short here, Support at 330p gone.

Peel hunt and Investec have a outright sell on the stock.

430?

Yep sorry slip of the key board 430p.

Broker note out this morning.....

BVS Davy: downgraded to underperform from outperform

Interim Mangement Statement.

Trading progressing well and land investment continuing

Bovis - is set to strut its stuff on Monday. Northland Capital Partners is confident the group will continue the run of upbeat trading comments seen from the UK house builders in the last 10 days. "Its (Euronext: ALITS.NX - news) full year 2011 trading comments should echo the positive IMS (Xetra: 875606 - news) [interim management statement] it released on 8th November (Stuttgart: A0Z24E - news) 2011 with a solid seven weeks to the end of December 2011," the broker said. Compared to last year, the fourth quarter of 2011 should have had fewer problems than the final quarter of 2010, when the government's comprehensive spending review was hanging over consumers' heads, and the poor weather in December was deterring site visits. "We look a little light on our unit sales for the full year as new sites continue to bolster sales rates and operating margin.

..Bovis expects further rise in house prices

By Roland Gribben | Telegraph – 14 minutes ago
.
Housebuilder Bovis Homes is forecasting another significant jump in profits this year after opening more sites, cutting costs, selling land and concentrating developments in the more prosperous south.

David Ritchie, chief executive, maintained the housebuilding sector's recovery theme in an upbeat trading view ahead of its full-year results which are expected to show pre-tax profits jumped from £18.5m in 2010 to about £31m.

Bovis expects to sell more homes this year at more sites at higher prices and improved margins to produce another significant increase in profits as the benefits from a business overhaul feed through.

The company's performance reflects the improvement being made by housebuilders in a market short of houses but where first-time buyers are continuing to struggle to secure mortgages.

Bovis says trading conditions will remain challenging this year and hopes the Government-backed mortgage indemnity scheme will provide a fillip.

Last year Bovis built 2,045 private and social homes, an increase of 8pc. The group achieved a 4.5pc rise to £180,000 in the price of private sales largely as a result of building more family homes in the south.

Cost cutting has helped raise gross margins from 17.9pc to more than 20pc and at operating level from 7.3pc to 10pc, while land sales on some of its bigger sites has helped Bovis make better use of capital employed. Four deals have raised £38m.

Bovis has started this year in a stronger cash position along with sales of 568 homes in the pipeline an increase of 35pc on the same period a year ago and is looking to maintain the momentum through an increase in the number of sales sites.

The group plans to have 85 sites producing higher margins and sales operating during the year. Another 18 sites with 2,600 plots have been added to the land bank, most of them in the south.

The shares rose 0.5 to 453.6p.

..

on Monday Bovis Homes Group should be back to its first full-year dividend since 2008. It's not going to be a big one, of course, at only around 1%, but it's heading back in the right direction.

Final Results.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketforceslive/2012/feb/27/bovis-down-despite-profit-rise

Ex-divi next wed, 28th Feb, 3.5p

Very contrarian today.

Interim Mangement Statement.

Monday, July 9

• Housebuilder Bovis updates on trading on Monday, after rvials Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey last week stuck to the familiar script - the sector is managing to grow in a wider market that is stagnant, but steady enough. Robin Hunt, an analyst at Peel Hunt, expects to see Bovis report further progress on site openings, which he sees as offering it better momentum than elsewhere in the sector. “Like-for-like trends also likely to be a little better than the larger national players due to higher south east bias,” he said

LONDON (ShareCast) - Results season for the house builders is upon us, and Bovis Homes kicks it off on Monday after releasing what Peel Hunt regarded as the weakest trading statement of all the companies in the sector back in July.

Peel Hunt's beef is with Bovis's margins, which the broker thinks look set to slip below the levels seen in the second half of last year.

Peel Hunt is forecasting headline pre-tax profit of £14.6m, or £10.7m if land sale profits are excluded.

"We exclude land because of its weight: it represents 30% of pure housing profits," Peel Hunt explains.

"Bovis is trying hard to rectify a poor ROIC [return on investment capital] but we still cannot see the return being higher than 6.5% even by 2014 with the risks being more towards undershooting than beating current consensus. This must drag on valuation," argues the broker, which has a "sell" recommendation on Bovis.

Half Yearly report

Operational highlights

· Legal completions of 944 homes (H1 2011: 801 homes), an increase of 18% with an average sales price of £164,400 (H1 2011: £163,400)

· Average active sales outlets increased by 21% to 82 in H1 2012 from 68 in H1 2011

· Two land sales achieved in H1 2012, delivering a profit of £3.9 million (H1 2011: Nil)

· 1,037 consented plots on eight sites added to the land bank during H1 2012, with a further 419 consented plots on two sites added in H2 to date

· Contracts in place at 20 August 2012 to acquire another circa 1,200 plots on ten sites, the majority of which are expected to be added to the consented land bank in H2 2012

· Terms agreed in principle to acquire a further 20 sites, representing in excess of 3,000 plots

· Consented land bank of 13,620 plots as at 30 June 2012, with potential gross profit of £574 million, calculated using prevailing sales prices and build costs (31 December 2011: 13,723 plots with gross profit potential of £524 million)

· 19,829 potential plots of strategic land (31 December 2011: 18,749 potential plots)

Current trading and outlook

· Strong trading in 2012 to date (33 trading weeks) with a 19% increase in private reservations to 1,253 homes (2011: 1,049) at a sales rate of 0.46 net private reservations per site per week

· Sales rates in the last seven weeks at 0.46 net private reservations per site per week, slightly ahead of the comparable prior year period

· Cumulative sales achieved to date for 2012 legal completion of 1,968 homes (2011: 1,607)

· Sales prices achieved to date marginally ahead of Group expectations

· Active sales outlets currently at 82, with an expected average of 83 for 2012 (2011: 73), an increase of 14%

· Average sales price for 2012 legal completions expected to be circa 6% greater than 2011, reflecting significant improvements in mix

· Housing gross margin expected to be between 21% and 22% for 2012 full year (2011: 20.8%), with an expected operating margin of between 12% and 13% (2011: 10.0%)

. Further significant improvement in return on capital employed for the 2012 full year, expected to approach 7.5% (2011: 5.0%)

i would have thought those numbers pretty good ........ given that bvs has performed far worse than either bdev or tw over the last year, a dabble may prove profitable





bvs = blue, tw = green, bdev = red, bkg = black

it's tempting to buy into housebuilders, perhaps adding persimmon into the mix - but which one (or two)?

Maybe those which are strongest in the south east or south west of the country?
Though there may be a considerable number of sites in the north, developers may struggle to sell plots with a decent profit margin, assuming they can find mortgagors at all.