Crest Nicholson plans to double home sales

Housebuilder Crest Nicholson has set out plans to nearly double home sales in the next five years with plans to open three new regional offices.

The £678m-turnover listed housebuilder said it will grow the business, which sold 2,247 homes in the last financial year, to produce “in excess of 4,200” homes a year by its 2026 financial year, while delivering an operating margin of between 18-20%.

The plan will see the housebuilder, which currently operates from five regional divisions across the south of England and the midlands, grow geographically by opening three new regional businesses.

In a statement to the City, the business did not state where it expected the new regions to be situated.

Crest Nicholson, which has been through a significant restructuring process under chief executive Peter Truscott in the last 18 months, said it was able to set out its growth plan after having “successfully completed a turnaround of its financial and operational performance”.

The growth plan will see the firm focus on volume and margin growth from its existing regions from now until 2024, by which time it plans to be delivering in excess of 3,000 homes, with the new regions contributing to the growth of the business between 2024 and 2026.

Crest sold just 2,247 homes in its covid-affected year to October 2020, but prior to that has been regularly building around 3,000 homes per year for the last five years.

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Crest also today laid out a raft of new climate change targets, including an intention to develop “science-based” net zero targets for the business which will be validated by the Science-Based Targets Initiative. These targets will include the impact of emissions from Crest’s supply chain as well as from the homes it produces when in use.

Crest said the targets would be designed to be in keeping with limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above historic levels.

Peter Truscott said: “We have developed an efficient operating platform and assembled a highly capable leadership team. The rapid progress we have made, supported by our strong balance sheet and favourable market context, gives us confidence to set out today’s ambitious growth plans.”