Edinburgh-based upmarket home builder Cala Group, currently owned by Legal & General, announced it has rebounded strongly to exceed pre-pandemic housing delivery volumes with an expected record turnover of £1.25 billion and anticipated pre-tax profit of £130 million, an increase of 35% on 2019.
Cala Group (Holdings) Limited issued preliminary results for the 12 months to December 31, 2021, ahead of audited accounts to be finalised in March.
Cala announced total home completions of 2,904 – an increase of 19% on the 2019 total of 2,449 units and up 59% on the 2020 total of 1,835 units.
Average sales price slipped to £462,000 in 2021 from £464,000 in 2019, but Cala entered the new financial year with 994 private forward reservations with a gross development value (GDV) of £488 million, up from 443 homes and £181m GDV in 2019.
Cala said its medium-term ambition is to reach revenue of £1.8 billion by 2026.
Cala Group CEO Kevin Whitaker said: “2021 has been a very successful year for the business, during which we have strongly rebounded to significantly exceed pre-pandemic 2019 volumes, revenue and pre-tax profit.
“Several factors have enabled our excellent financial performance across the 12-month period.
“In particular, we have seen many people making positive new home choices to seek out larger living spaces and this has driven very strong demand for our homes in aspirational suburban locations.
“While there have been significant supply chain challenges across the industry, the market has been strong.
“This, combined with improvements to our operational efficiency and the hard work of our team, has enabled us to deliver an excellent performance across the year.
“We expect to be one of the only major homebuilders to deliver new home completions in excess of pre-pandemic levels, with 2021 sales 19% up on 2019.
“Looking ahead to 2022 we are positive about our prospects.
“We enter the year with record forward private reservations, equating to a GDV of £488m.
“This year we plan to increase our housing delivery further still – building more than 3,200 homes across our eight regional operations.
“We have a strong short-term land bank to underpin the delivery of our current business plan and continue to invest heavily in land as we look towards our medium-term ambition of reaching a revenue of £1.8bn by 2026.”