HOUSEBUILDER Persimmon is preparing to open nine more sites in Scotland in the coming six months as its executives promised investors they could return £1.9 billion of surplus cash over the next decade while continuing to grow.
Managing director Jeff Fairburn told The Herald that sales completions were "sustained" in Scotland during 2011 as it opened 15 new sites and bought more land north of the Border.
He said: "We have seen a good start to the year. Visitor levels are up and we have got a good forward sales position."
Persimmon is building in locations including Newton Mearns, Aberdeen, Gala-shiels and Dumfries, and Mr Fairburn said the firm's assessment was that the Scottish housing market was performing in line with the rest of the UK. "Excluding the inner London market, we see a pretty consistent picture across the board," he said.
Around one-third of the company's sales involve a part-exchange, a service Mr Fairburn said was particularly well utilised in Scotland.
Persimmon promised to return £1.9bn to shareholders over the next decade while remaining debt-free.
The money, equivalent to 620p, will be paid through dividends, starting in 2013.
Persimmon, Britain's largest housebuilder by market value, reported a 55% rise in underlying pre-tax profit to £148.1 million, around £6m higher than the City had expected.
The firm proposed a final dividend of 6p, up from 4.5p for last year, to be paid on June 15. Persimmon's shares closed up 79.5p, or 12.7%, at 706.5p.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article