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

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.

I have TW (free shares) and PSN for my sins.

Or maybe a sector bet?

interesting thought skinny .... confess i have never bought sectors, but for no good reason

Questor share tip: Bovis a buy as profits double
Bovis Homes is focusing on building family houses in the south of England. Questor says buy.
By Garry White
7:00AM BST 21 Aug 2012
Comment
Bovis Homes
491.6p -1.4
Questor says HOLD

Bovis Homes Group

Housebuilder Bovis Homes is benefiting from land bought cheaply during the downturn. A doubling in pre-tax profit has led to a doubling of the company's dividend.

Like other players in the sector, Bovis has used the downturn to replenish its land bank cheaply all the way through the crisis. In the first half, 1,037 plots on eight sites were added to its land bank, with a further 419 plots on two sites in the second half to date.

Contracts are being finalised for a further 1,200 plots on 10 sites, which should make their way into the land bank in the current financial year.

Management are focusing on building family homes rather than flats because they offer higher margins. Geographically the majority are in the south of England, where demand – and average selling prices – are likely to be higher.
In the six months to June, revenues rose 27pc to £170.3m and pre-tax profits doubled to £16.2m.

The interim dividend was also doubled to 3p and will be paid on November 23. The board plans to continue to increase the dividend as earnings per share rise.

The operating margin for the full year is expected to be between 12pc and 13pc, compared with 10pc last year. This is the effect of the cheaper land purchases working through. Reassuringly, Bovis said sales prices achieved to date are marginally ahead of group expectations.

Trading conditions in recent weeks have remained stable, despite ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, which underscores the resilience of the UK market.

Bovis is continuing to invest in its business and, providing we have a relatively stable market, profit growth should be strong.

The current year's earnings multiple is 17.7, falling to 13.5 next year and the prospective yield is 1.6pc.

Last tipped at 453.6p in January, the shares remain a buy.

Bovis Homes is the latest of the UK's housebuilders to be hitting the heights, reaching a peak today of 522.5p, just short of its recent 52-week high of 524p. At that price, the shares are up over 30% since the beginning of June.

And while earnings are still way below pre-slump levels, we have had two years of strong recovery and have two more such years forecast -- the City is expecting to see earnings per share growth of 60% this year and another 40% in 2013.

Interim Management Statement

Current trading

The Group has now secured sufficient reservations to deliver its anticipated full year legal completions. Net private reservations achieved in the 45 weeks to 9 November 2012 were 1,669 (2011: 1,517). Net reservations per site per week for this period have averaged 0.46, in line with the rate achieved in the same period in 2011. The average number of active sales outlets during this period has increased by 12%. The Group is currently operating from 83 active sales outlets and expects the number at the year end to approach 90, with in excess of 30 new sales outlets launched during 2012.

Average sales price achieved in the year to date for private reservations expected to legally complete in 2012 is circa £190,000, which compares with £180,100 achieved on private legal completions in 2011. This increase reflects an improvement in the sales mix by location and size of home. Prices in the housing market are broadly stable with prices being generally stronger in the south of England.