Harworth Group expecting strong year end results

According to a trading update, highlights of the year include the purchase of two industrial units at Brighouse and Sherburn-in-Elmet for £12.8m, with a blended net initial yield of 8.08%. Planning applications were submitted for over 1.3m sq ft of commercial space and 1,300 commercial plots. At year end a total of over 4.1m sq ft of employment space and more than 3,000 residential plots were in the planning system awaiting determination.

“We anticipate full year results to be in line with expectations, reflecting good progress being made across all business sectors,” said Owen Michaelson, chief executive.

“Our results reflect that the majority of our value gains are realised through the active asset management of our underlying land and property portfolio, including strong residential and commercial land sales and continued efforts to improve the depth and breadth of our income portfolio. Our regional markets in the North of England and Midlands remain solid and should benefit further from emerging government policy.

“Looking forward, the planning headwinds that we reported at the half year still remain in place and we continue to manage this risk accordingly on a site-by-site basis. In addition, the returns from large-scale sites such as ours are not linear. Whilst we therefore continue to target long-term market-leading returns, our current trading plans indicate a profile for our historic site portfolio that anticipates delivering lower returns in the near term whilst our new sites work through the development cycle.”

Harworth will announce its full year results on 17 March 2020.