Persimmon rebuilds profits

1st Mar 2011 07:42

Housebuilder Persimmon proved today it's as a good as its word, reporting underlying profits in line with January's prediction, and sales have been "encouraging" since the beginning of the year.Profit before tax and exceptional items jumped to £95.5m in 2010 from just £7m the year before on revenue up 10.5% to £1.57bn. Including one-offs, profit more than doubled to £153.9m from £77.8m.Legal completions increased 4.5% to 9,384 new homes at an average selling price of £167,249, up 5.7% on last year, as flagged at a trading update at the beginning of this year.The company has already achieved about £848m of sales including legal completions in 2011 and prices remain stable. There's also some margin improvement over the year before.Demand has been "good" at new developments and the current levels of visitors to other developments and the interest in the firm's homes is "encouraging". Although the business wants an increase in mortgage approvals and more loan to value products for first time buyers, "the organisation, scale and cost base of the group enable us to operate successfully at the current levels of activity".There's a final dividend of 4.5p per share, taking the total payout for the year to 7.5p.