HomeServe confident of strong year end

WALSALL-based domestic repair firm HomeServe said it had seen a “good finish” to the financial year today.

In pre-close trading statement for the year ended today, the international home emergency business said it expected to report another year of strong growth in profit in line with expectations.

“We continue to see good customer and policy numbers and an excellent performance on retention across all our businesses,” it reports.

“In the UK, we have continued to invest in our marketing activity with the campaigns delivering strong customer and policy growth.

“Customer numbers at the end of February 2011 were 3% higher than at the same period in 2010 and we are confident of achieving towards the top end of our 3-4% customer growth target for the full year.

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“The UK retention rate has also remained high and we expect the full year rate to be at least 82.5%.”

It added that UK policy numbers were expected to be around 6% higher than a year ago, with growth among gas and gas supply policies.

The business continued to be “highly cash generative”, it said, with net debt expected to be around £20m now, compared with £52.9m 12 months ago.