There's no sign of a slowdown from the UK’s booming housing market judging by Galliford Try’s latest update.
The FTSE 250 housebuilder revealed full-year profits will be at the top end of analysts’ expectations, with sales improving since the general election.
Housebuilders breathed a sigh of relief in May when the Conservatives emerged victorious. The win wiped out the threat of the controversial “mansion tax” proposed by Ed Miliband.
In Galliford’s construction business, the order book has risen to £3.5 billion from £1.4 billion at the same point last year, with a healthy cash balance of more than £170 million.
Investors banked profits on the back of the upbeat statement and after a 32% rise from the share price this year, dragging the stock down 22p to 1,700p.
Chief executive Greg Fitzgerald would have been watching today’s Budget with interest, keeping an eye out for incentives for the housing market, following the launch of the Help to Buy ISA last time round.
Fitzgerald said: “Following a resilient performance in construction throughout a tough recession we are pleased to report another profitable year for the division, and are encouraged by the outlook.”
The FTSE 100 crept up 24.94 points to 6457.15, with Greece’s future, China’s stock market collapse, a slump in commodities prices and the Budget all on investors’ minds.
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Pearson, led by John Fallon, was the biggest blue-chip faller, down 20p to 1192p after Berenberg predicted tough times ahead for its US education business, advising clients to sell shares in the Financial Times owner.
Meanwhile, Asia-focused banks HSBC, down 8.5p at 550.1p, and Standard Chartered, down 13.7p at 985p, suffered after another slump from Chinese stocks.
Over on AIM, Empyrean Energy gushed 9% higher to 6.6p after a reserves upgrade at the Marathon Oil-operated Sugarloaf AMI project in Texas, in which it has a 3% stake; broker Cenkos lifted its target price to 20p.
Mobile payments group Monitise dropped 1.76p to six-year lows of 8.27p after it revealed Visa plans to trim its 5.3% stake.
This should not come as much of a shock to shareholders, who were warned last September that the payments giant was thinking about offloading its stake, which at the time was 5.5%. Since then, Monitise’s share price has collapsed by 75%.
