The Lemon Fool

Highlights

"• Focus on disciplined high quality growth delivers excellent full year performance

• Underlying profit before tax* increased by 23% to £782.8m (2015: £637.8m)

• Full year revenue up 8% to £3.14bn (2015: £2.90bn)

• Legal completions increased by 599 new homes to 15,171 (2015: 14,572) and average selling price increased by 3.8% to £206,765 (2015: £199,127)

• Operating margin* increased to 24.8% (2015: 21.9%); with second half improvement to 25.7%

• 41% increase in cash generation pre capital returns to £681m (2015: £483m)

• Return on average capital employed** increased by 23% to 39.4% (2015: 32.1%)

• A further 18,709 plots of land acquired in the year, with 11,268 plots successfully converted from the
Group's strategic land portfolio

• Underlying basic earnings per share* increased by 19% to 205.6p (2015: 173.0p)

• Net cash of £913.0m at 31 December 2016 (2015: £570.4m)

• Forward sales ahead at £1.89bn (2016: £1.74bn), an increase of 9%"

The important bit;

"The Directors propose to return 25p of surplus capital to shareholders for each ordinary share in issue held at 6.00pm on 10 March 2017 with payment made on 31 March 2017. This is an additional payment of surplus capital over and above the previously announced Capital Return Plan schedule. In line with the previously announced schedule, the Directors propose to return a further 110p of surplus capital to shareholders for each ordinary share in issue held at 6.00pm on 16 June 2017 with payment made on 3 July 2017 being a total return of 135p per share (2016: 110p)."

http://www.investegate.co.uk/persimmon- ... 00098552X/

Well that brightened my morning!

Compare and contrast this with Berkeley's capital return plan, both launched around the same time, initially very similar in structure and for the same 10-year period.

Persimmon wrote:...a further increase in the Capital Return Plan to be announced today, with an additional payment of 25 pence per share

Berkeley wrote:..the Board is proposing to introduce flexibility such that the remaining £10.00 per share payments can be made through a combination of share buy-backs and dividends, as opposed to solely dividends.

http://www.investegate.co.uk/berkeley-g ... 00097649Q/

Bree. (holds PSN)

I can't quite divine the point you're making Bree. But I am a holder of BKG and whilst I'd like to be receiving the usual £1 semi-annual div, I also understand why the board are giving themselves latitude to clobber the shorters, who have been circling since before the UKs BREXIT vote.
BKG have been buying back quite actively these past few days, and what they pay for buy-backs seems to be more than reflected in a rising share price. Meanwhile shorters are having to pay something like 7/+% to maintain their bearish position; ouch. With the potential for a reform of stamp-duty in the upcoming budget next week, and with BKG being Tory party donors, and stamp duty disproportionately hitting Tory voters... well, we'll see.

DiamondEcho wrote:I can't quite divine the point you're making Bree ... what they pay for buy-backs seems to be more than reflected in a rising share price...

A rising share price is of little interest to me - it's all about the income.

Ah, yes, I see. I hadn't thought of it from that perspective [perhaps as I'm not yet into drawing-down].