St Modwen confident of continued growth
WEST Midlands regeneration specialist St Modwen Properties has said it continues to make progress across all areas of its business and expects profits to be in line with expectations.
As the company enters its close period, the Quinton-based business said it was pleased that the company had continued to perform well since the Interim Management Statement at the end of September.
In a pre-close statement, it said it expected profits, property valuations and net asset values to be in line with management expectations, showing healthy year-on-year growth.
Bill Oliver, chief executive, said: “The outlook for St. Modwen remains positive, both in terms of profit and net asset value growth. We continue to capitalise on our ability to actively manage and progress our development projects across the UK. This and our strong forward position of pre-lets and pre-sales gives us confidence in our future growth.”
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It said it had continued to see rental income growth with active management of its portfolio helping it to grow the gross rent income by more than 6% to £46m per annum.
During the year it has completed over 270 new lettings and renewals, maintained rental levels and reduced voids across the portfolio to 12%, which compares with 17% in the November last year.
Residential land values have also recovered and the firm said it had seen increased activity in the residential land sector, with over 70% of its residential portfolio (20,000 plots) either secured with planning permission or allocated within local plans.
Its joint venture with Persimmon is progressing well and it will shortly submit two applications for detailed planning permission, each for 300 homes, to be built at Glan Llyn in Newport, South Wales and at the former Goodyear site in Wolverhampton.
Active management of its portfolio of sites across its UK land bank of 5,800 acres (November 2009: 5,600 acres) continues to deliver good progress, with further successes in planning and pre-letting.
The commercial market remains uncertain but it said its regional teams continued to find opportunities to generate value and its near term pipeline of development continued to grow.
It said it was pleased that renewal dates for the majority of its existing bank facilities had been extended to 2014/15, with no changes to the existing terms and conditions. The earliest significant maturity date is now September 2012 and the weighted average maturity of the group’s facilities is now 3.7 years (November 2009: 3.0 years).
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