Vistry Group PLC

Am I on? Morning, everyone. So welcome to our full year results presentations for 2025. Delighted to be joined today by our finance director, Tim Lawler, and our chief executive of partnerships, Stephen Teagle. So the agenda, I will do a very quick introduction. Tim will follow up with the financial review. Stephen will talk about the markets. And then I will go into quite a few slides on strategy and operational update, finishing off with an outlook. And then, of course, we'll have the Q&A, which we all can't wait for. so the 2025 headlines and so 2025 profit before tax in line with expectations which included a very very strong 2025 and just on that you know thank you to our team because there were a lot a lot of skeptics around following the issues we had at the end of 2024 that didn't think we would get to the numbers particularly when we said it would be dramatically second half weighted but we did and And the important thing there is, show you the resilience of the business and the model, is we had absolutely no help whatsoever from the market. So, you know, I've been around for 45 years and quite often you see a house builder get into trouble and the following year it's boom time and they get out of jail because the market's been quite good. We had no help whatsoever last year from markets. And we're all very proud of the fact that we are producing one in seven, that's 15% of the total affordable homes being constructed in the country. The group following massive reorganisation is lean, efficient and incredibly stable. We were probably along with Persimmon I would suggest the only active house builders in the land market last year which was incredibly soft and we bought some great land last year taking advantage of those soft markets which will help the company dramatically over the next few years. Net debt reduced down to £144 million at the end of 2025. And Stephen Teagle and I would both say, you know, we're very delighted that during the year, and it was not coming through at the end of this year, the £39 billion affordable housing programme, 26 to 36, Stephen and I have been around for, as I say, a long time, have never seen an injection of capital in affordable housing of that nature ever. So we're positioned for growth. So just going off script slightly, there were two announcements this morning. The first, obviously, about our results. The second, announcing my retirement. I'm told by Tim that some of the feedback is people were surprised. I'm not sure why people are surprised. It's all planned. The board have been expecting it. I've done 45 years. I'm 62 in June. My wife is older than me. and she's very lucky of course but she is older than me and I just want to enjoy myself and as some of you will know I've got one or two spare sets of clothes so I'm in a pretty good place and there's nothing more to it than absolutely that. but I will be around, so it's very much business as usual. That's the message within the group for quite some time to come. So no issues, no second guessing. It's just me. It's coming up to that sort of time. The business is in good shape. There's a new social housing programme coming forward. It's the right time for all concerned. So as I say, where are we? The business is stabilised. The new organisation structure with the executive chairs that we've got is working exceptionally well. we are differentiated from our house building peer group and we're completely aligned with the government and we'll keep coming back to that Stephen and I during the presentation we've got some great long-term relationships with the largest housing associations and Homes England and these relationships aren't over the last two or three years these are relationships that you know kind of Stephen and I have had since you know before 2000 you know years and years and years of doing affordable housing and don't forget your average housing association is generally wary about your average house builder because they know they only really want to deal with them when the markets are poor when the markets are good they drop them like a stone were positioned, ideally, to capture the social grant program that's coming up now, 2026 to 36, and we've started the bidding process. And this last point, not to be underestimated, and I'll come back to this time and time again, we are very vertically integrated with our Vistri Works operation, which has got three factories, incredibly good. The product that they're producing is excellent. And what I would say is, timber frame is generally you know net more expensive and well not generally it is more expensive and building traditionally where you gain is speed reduction in premiums I'm not sure timber frame works for pure house builders it does when they're going hell for leather and they're building quickly but when they're not building quickly as is the case at the moment you're not getting that speed because what's the point of building when you can't sell as quick as you want so timber frame works very very well for a partnership business where you've got the visibility not so well for a house builder and just a little quip on that Carla Holmes private equity are pulling out of timber frame because it's more expensive because they're not selling quick enough and they're fed up with the prelim overruns without that coming through so just something to bear in mind it is vital with a partnerships business and the government and housing associations also like the MMC. So it really, really works well for us. So looking ahead, we're absolutely set to benefit from the partner-funded growth. Now, rent convergence and rent settlement have both now been announced, which is great. And I'll just remind some of you that at least one housing association in London has said that rent convergence is as important to their balance sheet and building going forward as the 2026, 36, 39 billion pounds. So rent convergence for housing associations, it repairs their balance sheet, is huge. And also don't underestimate the 10-year rent settlement. We're 15% of the market. You just need to look and do the numbers. We'll obviously be looking to increase our market share, but even maintaining our market share at 15% shows that we've got a fantastic opportunity ahead of us. And that opportunity is now coming at the end of this year. Are we disappointed with the delays since it's been announced? Yes, but the process is happening. It'll all be announced in September. We'll have visibility before that. It's coming. Open market growth in the end is inevitable. It's highly cyclical. I just don't see it anytime soon. And what's going on at the present moment in time in Iran is making that even more uncertain because not only will we potentially see prices going up, which we've made a little line in our forward projections which we're talking to analysts about but early days and it could all end tomorrow the longer it goes on the more those prices will start to come through but don't underestimate consumer confidence also being hit by what's going over there as well so we're reducing our inventory and that will give us more options with capital allocation And we absolutely, with our 25 business units and our Vestryworks operation, which is capable of doing 10,000 units a year just from the three factories, we are very, very able and willing to respond to the opportunities that are ahead of us. So on that, I'll hand over to Tim. And I'm just dying to see what Tim's joke is going to be with this. Oh, he's changed it. Oh, I'm looking at my screen. Sorry. Something's gone wrong there, hasn't it? It's probably me.

Oh, here we go.

There we are, yeah. So I'm very much looking forward to the joke that inevitably has got to come from that photo. Every dog has his day.