What do five housebuilder trading updates tell us?

By Tony Williams2020-07-13T05:00:00

Share prices are on the up, thanks to healthy order books and the stamp duty holiday surge, says Building Value’s Tony Williams

Bus bunching is a mathematical inevitability according to academics, but in layman’s terms it goes like this: “you wait ages for a bus and then three or four come along at once”. So, it is with housebuilder’s trading updates: five last including three on Thursday.

Four from five share prices rose by between 5% and 17% (only Springfield fell). These share prices also largely ignored the inevitable confirmation that trading in the previous six months (pretty much calendar H1 2020) was dreadful with unit sales dropping by 25% (Springfield) to a shocking 63% (Vistry). Springfield also nobly, and unilaterally, fessed up to a 40% drop in PBT (which is also why its share price fell).

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