By Joe Hoppe
Persimmon PLC said Wednesday that revenue fell 9% in 2020, but its current forward sales position for the year rose.
For the year ended Dec. 31, the U.K. home builder said revenue was 3.33 billion pounds ($4.55 billion), compared with GBP3.65 billion a year earlier. The company said performance was good in the second half of the year, mitigating some of the coronavirus-driven disruption in the first half.
Total forward sales value was GBP1.69 billion as of Dec. 31, compared with GBP1.36 billion a year earlier, the company said.
Persimmon said new home legal completion volume was down 14% on year to 13,575, with an average selling price of around GBP230,500, up from GBP215,709 a year earlier. Demand for new homes was resilient in the second half, with the weekly average sales rate rising 39% on year.
The company didn't provide any figures for pretax profit, but according to a consensus of 15 analyst estimates taken from FactSet on Tuesday, it is expected to be GBP856.1 million, down from GBP1.05 billion in 2019.
Persimmon said it paid 110 pence a share in dividends over the year, but didn't provide any information on a final dividend.
Write to Joe Hoppe at joseph.hoppe@wsj.com
