Outgoing Taylor Wimpey CEO Pete Redfern
(Picture: Taylor Wimpey)Pete Redfern is bowing out on a high at Taylor Wimpey after announcing surging revenues and handing more than £450 million to investors.
Revenue at the housebuilder jumped 54% to £4.3 billion last year and pre-tax profit leapt 157% to £680 million.
Taylor Wimpey announced a 4.4p per share final dividend, taking the full-year dividend to £324 million. A share buyback of £150 million was announced alongside the divi.
Redfern said the builder sector got “back to normal” faster than other industries and was now seeing the results.
Matt Britzman, an equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Taylor Wimpey took a different approach over the pandemic, buying up land at good prices while others turned off the taps. That land should start to feed into volume growth from 2023 ”
The bumper return for investors represents Redfern’s last major act in charge at Taylor Wimpey, which he has run for 15 years. He is due to step down in April.
The company had lately faced pressure from activist investor Elliott, which argued that the company had under-performed in areas including shareholder returns. It claimed a change of leadership would help.
Taylor Wimpey has benefited from booming house prices despite inflation and interest rates beginning to rise. Rival Galliford Try enjoyed the same fair wind and said today pre-tax profit hit £7.1 million over the last six months, compared with £4.1 million last year. Revenue increased 10% to £594 million.
Elsewhere in the sector, Westminster property fund Welput today said it had picked Swedish construction company Skanska to build a new £1 billion, 16-storey “ultra-sustainable” office block on the site of Victoria’s House of Fraser. The new development will feature 30,000sq ft of terraces and rooftop allotments. When it was announced in October Welput said it would be “ the UK’s largest all-electric net zero office building”.
Work on the 470,000sq ft project, due to start later this year, will net £235 million for Skanska.
