Focusing on Our Customers
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Focusing on our customers Annual Report 2019 What’s inside Highlights this report? Strategic report Financial Non-Financial 2 Chairman’s statement 8 Who we are 3 10 The UK housing market Revenue -2% HBF Score +6% 12 Our business model 14 Our strategic objectives £3.65bn 83.7% 16 Our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) 2018: £3.74bn 2018: 78.9% 19 A sustainable business 22 Group Chief Executive’s statement 1 28 Financial review Operating margin -3% Charitable foundation donations 32 Strategic update 57 How we manage risk 28.2% £2.3m 58 Our principal risks 2018: 29.0% 2018: £1.3m 64 Viability statement 66 Section 172 Statement 4 71 Non-Financial Information Profit before tax -5% Affordable homes +8% Governance £1,040.8m 3,589 Directors’ Report: 2018: £1,090.8m 2018: 3,333 72 Chairman’s introduction to Corporate Governance 74 Board leadership Net assets per share +2% Trainees and apprentices +19% 76 Corporate Governance Statement 84 Nomination Committee Report 1,021.7p c.750 87 Chair’s introduction to the Audit Committee Report 2018: 1,006.0p 2018: c.630 89 Audit Committee Report 95 Other disclosures Cash generation Investment in local Remuneration: pre land investment2 -8% communities5 +10% 98 Remuneration Committee Chair’s Statement 101 Directors’ future Remuneration Policy £996.2m £522m 110 Annual Report on Remuneration 2018: £1,082.8m 2018: £474m Financial statements Homes provided 121 Statement Of Directors’ Responsibilities Dividend with FibreNest +704% 122 Independent Auditor’s Report 129 Consolidated Statement of Comprehensive Income 235p 4,679 130 Balance Sheets 2018: 235p 2018: 582 131 Statement of Changes in Shareholders’ Equity 133 Cash Flow Statements 134 Notes to the Financial Statements Other information 1 Stated on revenue of £3,649.4m (2018: £3,737.6m) and profit from operations of £1,029.4m (2018: £1,082.7m). 178 Shareholder Information 2 Cash generation pre land investment is net cash flow before capital return (£747.8m) and net land investment £452.6m (2018: capital return £732.3m and net land investment £605.1m). 178 Financial Calendar 2020 3 We participate in a National New Homes Survey run by the HBF. The Survey year covers the period from 1 October to 30 September. The rating system is based on the number of customers who would recommend their builder 178 Five Year Record to a friend. 4 Homes provided to our housing association partners and Discounted Open Market Value homes. 5 The value of homes delivered to housing associations, the value of Discounted Open Market Value Housing plus the value of planning contributions we have made. Strategic report Governance Financial statements Other information Focusing on our customers To build good quality homes at a range of price points across the UK. We aim to create and protect superior and sustainable levels of value for the benefit of our customers, workforce, suppliers and shareholders through the housing cycle. Throughout this report, we include a range of stakeholders who directly input into our purpose, or benefit from it. Planning Persimmon Homes Manager Customer See page 47 See page 32 Customer Care Apprentice Admin Manager Carpenter See page 36 See page 41 Persimmon Plc | Annual Report | December 2019 1 Chairman’s statement Providing a strong platform for the Group’s long term sustainable success Operational highlights “ The Group has significantly invested in its customer care improvement plan, 15,855 placing our customers at the centre Homes sold -4% of the business. This investment 2018: 16,449 provides the foundations for the £215,709 Group’s sustainable development.” Roger Devlin Average selling price 0.1% Chairman 2018: £215,563 £1.98bn * Forward sales -2% 2019: £2.02bn 71,942 Owned land bank (plots) -5% 2018: 75,793 c.750 acres** Public open space and gardens for families provided 19% 2018: c.750 acres c.50,000 ** Construction and supply chain jobs 2018: c.50,000 * As at 26 February 2020 (2018 figure as at 25 February 2019). ** Estimated using an economic toolkit. 2 Persimmon Plc | Annual Report | December 2019 Strategic report Governance Financial statements Other information Persimmon’s purpose is to build good quality homes at a range Customers and communities of price points across the UK. We aim to create and protect Persimmon aims to provide homes for all by constructing a wide superior and sustainable levels of value for the benefit of our range of good quality affordable homes in places where people customers, workforce, suppliers and shareholders through want to live and work right across the UK. The Group’s average the housing cycle. Developing a business based on strong, private selling price of £241,985 is 18% lower than the national sustainable foundations, and where our employees have the average for newly built homes sold to owner occupiers2. In line opportunity to achieve their full potential, provides the platform with Government housing policy, the Group focuses on creating for our continued success. We recognise that this success is attractive neighbourhoods which enhance and contribute to dependent upon strong engagement with, and delivery for, all the local area and meet the housing needs of the communities our stakeholders, including our customers, our people, our they serve. Persimmon supports more first time buyers onto the supply chain partners, local communities and Government. housing ladder than any other UK major housebuilder, with 50% From the start of 2019, Persimmon commenced a programme of our private new homes being sold to first time buyers in 2019. of change, making significant additional investment in a customer Improving the quality of the homes we build and the service we care improvement plan, which placed the customer at the centre provide to our customers was the Group’s top priority throughout of our business. At the heart of this plan is a commitment by 2019. We are putting quality and service for our customers before Persimmon to a programme of cultural and operational change volume, delaying sales releases on developments with high that prioritises customer care over volume growth. Affirming the demand until build is at a more advanced stage, to support the Group’s commitment to implement this change and to ensure implementation of our customer care improvement plan initiatives. it would achieve its objectives, the Board commissioned an New homes stock levels were 14% higher at the year end and Independent Review (‘the Review’). The Review, published in the Group invested an additional £213m in work in progress December 2019, provided some additional recommendations year on year. The recruitment of our new Independent Quality which the Persimmon team have embraced and are in the process Inspections team provides another level of scrutiny, of implementing. As previously announced, the Board will provide strengthening our overall quality assurance processes. an update on its consideration of the purpose and culture element of the Review’s recommendations at the AGM in April 2020. Our Construction Working Group, led by our newly appointed Group Construction Champion, is establishing ‘the Persimmon Way’, which The focus on delivering consistently higher build quality and will consolidate our approach to new home construction standards improving the standard and responsiveness of the service and embed best practice across the Group. This approach is customers receive has started to deliver the anticipated benefits. consistent with the recommendations of the Independent Review. Whilst Persimmon’s plans to deliver consistently higher levels of quality and service go far beyond a focus on the criteria of the We have also invested significantly in enhancing customer service, HBF customer satisfaction survey, the ongoing improvement in increasing on-site customer care resource by 70% and improving our HBF rating, which is trending strongly ahead of the Four Star IT support to deliver a more responsive service. The introduction threshold, is tangible evidence of the progress made so far. of our Homebuyers Retention Scheme in July 2019, is a first for the industry, and is already driving behavioural change within Persimmon’s results for 2019 reflect the strength of the the business. Further detail on the Group’s customer care Group’s positioning in offering a broad choice of homes for all, improvement plan is provided in the Chief Executive’s Review. and across the regions of the UK. The Group’s new home legal completion volumes were 4% lower than the prior year, reflecting the later sales release of homes under construction in higher demand areas as part of the plans to improve build quality and customer service. The Group continued to increase its investment in work in progress to £1,095m (2018: £882m) to support these initiatives. Profit before tax was £1,041m (2018: £1,091m) with an underlying new housing operating margin1 of 30.3% (2018: 30.8%). Cash balances of £844m were held at the end of the year (2018: £1,048m) and the Group’s owned and controlled land holdings totalled 93,246 plots (2018: 99,088 plots). We are confident that the implementation of our customer care improvement plan, our continued commercial success and wider investment in society provide a strong platform for the long term, sustainable development of the Group. 1 Stated before goodwill impairment (2019: £7.3m, 2018: £9.2m) and based on new housing revenue (2019: £3,420.1m, 2018: £3,545.8m). 2 National average selling price for newly built homes sourced for the UK House Price Index as calculated by the Office for National Statistics from data provided by HM Land Registry. Persimmon Plc | Annual Report | December 2019 3 Chairman’s statement continued We place great importance on our wider contribution to the Long term strategy and capital return plan communities we serve. During the year we have invested over Persimmon’s strategy is aligned to its purpose – building on its £520m in local communities through the delivery of new homes sustained success the Group will support continued investment for lower income families and planning contributions, which have in residential development opportunities for the benefit of helped create over 2,500* school places.