Taylor Wimpey plc

Hello, everyone. Thank you for attending today's trading update call. My name is Ken, and I will be your moderator today. All nights will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Jenny Daly, to begin. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ken. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining the call. As usual, I'm joined by Chris Kearney. I'll start with a few quick words before opening up for your questions. You'll have seen from the statements that trading in the year so far has been steady, only slightly down on a strong comparator at this point last year. Nevertheless, we are not immune to the uncertainty and challenges posed by the macro backdrop and I'll talk about this shortly. Suffice to say, our excellent sales teams remain focused on driving our database and supporting customers through their buying journeys. Our net private sales rate for the year to date was 0.74 per outlet per week compared to 0.77 at the same point last year, with a cancellation rate of 14%. Excluding bulk sales, our net private sales rate for the year to date is 0.73 per outlet per week compared to 0.76 at the same point last year. Our total order book stands at £2.2 billion compared to £2.3 billion at the same point last year, representing around 7,700 homes compared to around 8,200 homes. The pricing environment has been more challenging in recent weeks, particularly in the south of England, where affordability is more stretched and overall pricing in the order book is now around 1% lower year on year. You'll recall that at the start of the year we talked about a proactive approach, particularly in London, where we were working our way out of certain apartment schemes. And it's fair to say that some of this pricing weakness reflects decisions taken here to make sure we keep recycling capital in line with our strategic goals. Elsewhere, pricing is softer with some geographies, particularly in the north, being more resilient than others, as you would expect. Overall, and encouragingly, new customer visits to sites and engagement remains pretty consistent throughout the spring selling season, helped by increased sales and marketing spend. As we discussed at full year, we are seeing customers visiting sales centres multiple times before making buying decisions, and given the outlook for prolonged higher interest rates this year, they are deal and incentive focused. Cancellation rates to date also remain consistent with recent experience. Another area of focus, given the backdrop, is build costs. In terms of our suppliers, as we said at the full year, we've negotiated strongly on contracts for this year with some success, but are seeing increasing requests for price increases and surcharges due to rising energy and fuel costs as a result of the conflict. In that context, and it is still relatively early in the year, The outlook for bill cost inflation in 2026 is now perhaps more like low to mid single digit rather than the low single digit I talked about when I spoke to you at our full year results. Of course we continue to scrutinise all supplier requests closely and work to defer and mitigate increases where possible. So it is hard to call it right now. The duration of the conflict will be a key determinant but this is what we're seeing currently and of course we will keep you updated as we move through the year. I am going to make good progress with the share buyback programme and as at the close of business on 24 April 2026 have purchased 39 million shares equating to 34.9 million of the planned 52 million which we continue to expect to complete in the first half. Pleasingly we continue to see good progress on planning and are prioritising outlet openings In the year to date, we operated from an average of 219 sales outlets compared to 208 for the same period last year and are currently operating from 218 and on track to open more outlets in 2026 and in 2025. We are taking a highly selective approach to land buying given the backdrop and have approved around 1,000 plots in the year to date compared to around 1,700 plots at the same point last year. But our strong land position positions It gives us some flexibility here and we will see how market conditions evolve going forward. When we set out our guidance for 2026 at the prelims, we were very clear that it did not assume any impact from the situation in the Middle East. At that point, it was an emerging event with a high degree of uncertainty around how it might develop. Since then, it's fair to say that market conditions have become more challenging. Bringing that together, while we're not setting revised guidance today, we are being open with you about what we're seeing on the ground. For the first half, we now expect UK volumes to come in slightly ahead of our previous half-won guidance. That said, the pricing and cost pressures I mentioned earlier more than offset this benefit, so we now expect half-won profitability to be slightly below our prior expectations. The increased uncertainty means that there are a wider range of potential outcomes for the full year 2026 than we were previously planning for and a lot will now depend on how long the conflict persists and the implications that has for both interest rates and consumer confidence. We will update you further in the interim results when the outlook for 2026 will be clearer. For now, we are facing into this uncertainty, laser focus on keeping a tight rein of what we can control staying close to the customer, making proactive choices where we believe it's the right thing to do and tightly managing costs and I want to thank our teams in this regard for their strong operational discipline. We remain confident that we have highly experienced teams in place, great product, excellent land position and the right strategy and we will remain agile to respond to changing conditions to optimise performance in all markets. So thank you for that and I'll now open up for your questions.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star fold by one on your telephone keypad. To remove your question, please press star fold by two. Again, to ask a question, please press star one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking a question. We'll pause here briefly as questions are registered. Thank you. We have our first question from Carlos Caruso from Kapla. Please go ahead.