Housebuilder Bovis Homes appears to be faring the housing downturn more robustly than its larger, more indebted rivals, but nevertheless reported a pre-tax loss of £79m last year.
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Strip out exceptional charges, which included a further £75m land writedown and £5.7m restructuring costs, and Bovis made an underlying pre-tax profit of £14.4m. Its underlying operating margin - famously one of the highest in the business - collapsed to 7.5 per cent from 22.4 per cent a year ago. Nevertheless, this is still a better performance than rival which reported margins of 1.5 per cent at full-year results last week.