End of year trading update – 1 December 2010
St. Modwen Properties PLC, the UK’s leading regeneration specialist, announces continued progress across all areas of its business.
As the company enters its close period, St. Modwen is pleased to announce that the business has continued to perform well since the Interim Management Statement was issued on 30 September 2010. St. Modwen expects profits, property valuations and net asset values to be in line with management expectations, showing healthy year-on-year growth.
Continued rental income growth
Active management of our portfolio has enabled us to grow the gross rent roll by over 6% to £46 million per annum. During the year we have completed over 270 new lettings and renewals, maintained rental levels and have reduced our voids across the portfolio to 12% (November 2009: 17%).
Residential land values
We continue to see signs of increased activity in the residential land sector and over 70% of our residential portfolio (20,000 plots) is either secured with planning permission or allocated within local plans.
The joint venture with Persimmon is progressing well and we 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, West Midlands.
Development portfolio continues to grow
Active management of our portfolio of sites across our UK land bank of 5,800 acres (November 2009: 5,600 acres) is continuing to deliver good progress, with further successes in planning and pre-letting. The commercial market remains uncertain but our regional teams continue to find opportunities to generate value and our near term pipeline of development continues to grow.
We have, for example, recently started on site with our £10 million Venture Fields Leisure Development at Widnes Waterfront. Developed in conjunction with Halton Borough Council, this 100,000 sq ft scheme is already 96% pre-let and will provide up to 150 new jobs for the area.
Funding
We are pleased that the renewal dates for the majority of our existing bank facilities have 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).
Bill Oliver, Chief Executive, St. Modwen comments:
“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.”
