Bovis Profits And Completions Tumble

Bovis Group BVS It is years since a major house builder produced such an appalling set of results. To do so at a time when the industry is in a long term boom illustrates the depth and severity of the problems which Bovis created for itself and to which management was too inept to find solutions. At least it now has a new CEO who has been in post since April and can hopefully start to get a grip on things.

Completions in the six months to the 30th June fell by 6% which is no surprise because at the same time the average selling price of a Bovis home rose by 9%, which the company appears to be trying to claim was not really a price increase as such but due to a change in mix. The result is that half year profit before tax fell by 31% and earnings per share by30%, whilst net debt more than quadrupled to over £32m. The company claims that the disaster is down to operational issues which can be fixed. The interim dividend remains unchanged but as a sweetener to shareholders they are promised that the full year dividend for 2017 will be increased by 5% and that for 2018 it they will get a further 20% increase. In addition, over the three years to 2020, special dividends equal to 134p per share will also be paid.

Since February customer rating levels are said to have improved significantly but they are still down at 74% which means that a quarter of Bovis customers are dissatisfied. One answer the company proposes is to focus on affordable housing and the second is to increase the number of houses built to 4,000 a year. In the current half year it completed 1,512.

AudioBoom BOOM set another quarterly record  with third quarter revenue rising by 32% over quarter 2 and by 329% over the third  quarter of 2016. This strong financial and operational performance is expected to continue with orders received for the fourth quarter continuing at record levels.

Empyrean Energy EME is excited about the prospects for offshore China Block 29/11 and confirms that, based on its internal preliminary analysis, the Block contains prospects of truly significant scale and size. The three priority targets have the potential to contain 591m barrels of oil.

Molins MLN moved back into profit for the half year to the 30th June with last years half time loss of £0.3m being replaced by a statutory profit of £0.9m. Basic earnings per share of 4.3p similarly replaced a loss of 1.5p per share. The company claims that it is now positioning itself for sustained long term growth.

Redde REDD saw like for like turnover rise by 19% in the year to the 30th June and the final dividend is to be increased by 8.7% making a total increase for the year of 9.8%. Adjusted profit before tax rose by 16% and adjusted basic earnings per share by 16.8%

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