Vistry profits slump 65% after 'disappointing' year

(Sharecast News) - House builder Vistry reported a slump in profits after "disappointing" year amid challenging market conditions, abandoned projects and cost overruns. Pre-tax profit for 2024 fell 64% to £105.5m despite a 7% rise in completions. Vistry added that its forward order book totalled £4.4bn in the year to date, compared with £4.6bn last year, while the group sales rate was down to 0.59 per site per week from 0.81, reflecting a low volume of Partner Funded transactions in the first quarter.

The company, which pivoted to building affordable homes in partnership with local authorities and housing associations, issued three profit warnings in the last quarter of the year and halved its operating divisions to three as a result of its problems.

"Following the government's recent announcement of an additional £2bn of affordable housing funding to the existing affordable homes programme, we expect partner funded activity to step-up during the year, resulting in a greater H2 weighting of delivery for the group in 2025," the company said on Wednesday.

"Overall, we are expecting our partner funded volumes in 2025 to be at a similar level to 2024, with strong momentum going into 2026."

Vistry said it had seen "some uptick" in open market sales in the past four weeks and expected this to continue to improve.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com