Yorkshire
Housing annual report and financial statements and investor
update
Yorkshire Housing Finance Plc would
like to inform investors that the Yorkshire Housing Group financial
statements for the year ended 31st March 2024 can be accessed on our investor page of our
website through the following link:
YH investor webpage
Or through the national storage
mechanism:
YH Group Annual Financial Report NSM
Some key points include:
· Rent
and service charge income was broadly in line with our expectations
and grew year-on-year by £9.3m to £108.2m. This increase was driven
by the inflationary increase on rents of 7% and growth in the
number of homes.
· Shared
ownership first tranche sales decreased by £3.2m to £21.9m in the
year. This was on slightly lower volumes than the previous year.
Demand for shared ownership properties remained high and the
performance was better than budgeted.
· Open
market sales (OMS) fell to £1.1m this year. The number of homes
sold fell from 42 in 2023 to 3 this year, which was well below our
initial plans. This reflected a difficult year for the housing
market and some challenges at certain development schemes.
Positively, we were able to switch a number of homes originally
earmarked as OMS to shared ownership in the year. This helped
manage the unsold homes levels as well as add to the affordable
housing stock.
· Underlying operating costs increased by £8.1m to £98.8m.
Inflation on repairs and investment were the most significant
factor, followed by inflation on wages and salaries.
·
All of this resulted in a £0.7m increase in
operating surplus to £29.4m this year. This didn't translate into
an increase in overall surplus however, because of the cost of
borrowing. Rising interest rates meant our interest costs jumped
£5.8m to £23.2m this year. Bonds issued in November 2023 through
the Affordable Housing Guarantee Scheme have helped us to improve
our incremental cost of borrowing going forward.
Andy Oldale - Executive Director of
Finance and Governance said "Our Financial
Performance for the year ended 31st March 2024 was solid, despite the continuation of
broader economic challenges. Our core rental business performed
well and shared ownership continues to be a popular choice with
customers, despite the challenges we experienced in the outright
sales market.
We are continuing to progress well
with our strategy and focus on our customers. We also retained our
G1 rating from the Regulator and our A3 Moody's rating.
Finally, I'm really proud that we
were able to complete the development of nearly 700 new homes, with
each one going a small way to help more people in our region have a
quality place to call home."