Hello, and welcome to the Vistry Group trading update call. My name is Laura, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this call is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Greg Fitzgerald, Group Chief Executive, to begin today's conference. Thank you. Okay. Thanks very much, Laura, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm conscious that we are the last out of the blocks with this update, so I'll keep this short. A lot of which you would have heard before over the last week or so, but some of it is new. Delighted joining me today, Earl Sibley, Group COO, Tim Lawlor, our new Group CFO, and Susie Bell, Director of Investor Relations. As usual, as I say, I'll give a brief intro and then, as Laura said, we'll open it up to Q&A. 2022 was a great year for the group with excellent progress across both businesses. Profit before tax at GBP 418 million is a small beat against market consensus and significantly ahead of where we thought we would be at the start of the year. A good result given the market challenges seen in the Q4. That GBP 418 million includes the finance costs that we've incurred since the completion of the acquisition of Countryside on November 11, but it doesn't include any profits from Countryside in what we're calling the stub period, the six or seven weeks. Housebuilding delivered on its strategy of controlled volume growth and margin progression with completions up 3%, 6,774 units, and gross margin increasing to at least 23%, and that's a year ahead of our schedule. We do talk a lot about Partnerships, quite rightly. It's an important part of our business. I'm delighted to say now that having been around for a long time, I would now say we've got a very good housebuilding business. Partnerships also delivered on strategy with higher margin, mixed tenure completions up 17.6%, and the operating margin increasing to at least 10%. Again, all as we said at the time of the acquisition in 2020. The acquisition of Countryside Partnerships was a unique opportunity for the group, and I was delighted to complete the acquisition on the 11th of November, and that was the culmination of 18 months, I would suggest, of thinking about it and having dialogue with Countryside. It has rapidly accelerated, of course, Vistry's strategy of growing its high return, more resilient revenues, and firmly positioned the group as a leading home builder with, without any shadow of a doubt, the leading partnerships business. We hit the ground running with the integration. The new operating structure has been in place since the start of the year. The consultation period with staff is now complete. 200 roles have come out of the group, and we've closed four offices. As a group, we benefited from the lessons learned from the integration of Galliford Try's housebuilding business three years ago, and they're very much in our mind. We obviously did a lot of things right, but some things we did wrong, which we're not gonna repeat with the Countryside integration. Following on some very thorough due diligence, I wasn't expecting any surprises, but I'm pleased to report that nearly three months in, I can see even greater opportunity from the combination and have increased confidence of delivering at least GBP 50 million worth of synergies on an annualized basis, and far more than the GBP 19 million of synergies that we put into our forecast for 2023. The group, this may surprise a lot of you, ended the year with a net cash position of around GBP 115 million, which is significantly ahead of expectations and reflects stronger cash generation in the H2 of both Vistry and for that matter, Countryside. It follows the GBP 300 million plus fees, cash paid for Countryside in November, the GBP 35 million share buyback during the summer, and of course, two dividends paid out in November and May last year. It was a good year in the land market and both businesses are very well positioned on land and planning for 2023. I'm also pleased to say that the land market, we're seeing more and more signs of it adjusting to the new market, and we are seeing some very good opportunities come ahead of us as we speak. Looking at trading in a little more detail, as with our peers, we saw a significant drop-off in private sales following the September mini budget and the resulting hike in interest rates and macro uncertainty. The combination of this wider macro uncertainty and uncertainty around the government's social housing rent ceiling also generated a hesitancy amongst housing providers during the Q4, which is now dissipating. I'll give you a good example of that in a second or two. Every week that went by on the housing market from the disastrous budget was slightly better than the week before. As I say, we are encouraged, which I'll come back to in a sec, on the first three weeks of this year. The group focused on year-end delivery. We held firm on prices are remaining in line with what we expect. We haven't seen any falls and consciously slowed land acquisition within Housebuilding and somewhat within Partnerships. Both businesses are firmly focused on cost reduction opportunities within our supply chain, that's subcontractors and suppliers of materials. Including synergistic benefits and optimizing our work in progress. At the present moment in time, we are seeing some major signs of our subcontract supply chain knowing and seeing there are gonna be less houses built by the sector in 2023, and we're starting to see some discounts coming through, which is the first time we would have seen that for over two years. Please don't forget that the supply chain have had a whale of a time over the last two years, some of which is absolutely the right thing because of fuel and energy prices rising, but some of it was a bit more than that. Every dog has his day, and our day is as we as we speak. Since the start of the year, we're only three weeks in, we've seen a strong pickup in prospects and visitor levels. Since Boxing Day, that's gone through the roof. Sales rates in the first two weeks and what we're expecting this week are in line with 2019's pre-pandemic levels, which we are very happy with, and that's what we're basing our internal forecast on. As I say, pricing continues to remain firm and cancellation rates are below 20%, the historic norm. We remain firm on pricing, and indeed, last week, we actually saw pricing levels at GBP 300,000 above our forecast. On partnerships, we see a strong quarter one pipeline. We have a number of excellent development opportunities which are close to signing. Going back to my point about we saw a little bit of hesitancy with housing associations, particularly immediately following on from the September budget. On Friday, we were delighted to enter into a JV with Torus Housing Association, the largest provider of affordable housing in the Northwest, for a development called Peel Hall in Warrington. The site will deliver 1,200 new homes, of which 595 will be affordable homes managed by Torus, with a land value in excess of GBP 100 million. That's largely funded by Torus. That completed or contracted on Friday. A good demonstration there of where the RP market now is. Whilst there remains uncertainty on the market outlet, I sit here cautiously optimistic that buy sentiment will improve over the coming months. Recognizing, as I say, it's only week three of the year, there are some small green shoots of recovery. I don't believe, I know, and I've been around for long enough, partnerships model is resilient and are confident that there is clear potential to generate material value with enhanced scale and superior returns in the mid-medium term. On that, thank you for listening. I'll hand back to you, Laura. We'll take any questions. Thank you very much. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We will now take our first question from Chris Millington at Numis. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks very much. Hi. Morning, Greg and team. A few if I can, please. I just wonder if you could touch on how Countryside ended the year? Obviously, they put out some profit guidance of GBP 150 million. There's no reference to it, albeit, I suspect it's not a million miles off. I'd love to hear about that. That, I'll do it as you go through, Chris, or I'll forget. Yeah, they ended their year in September, GBP 150 million. Gotcha. I'm assuming cash was a little bit better there than people were expecting as well. Greg, is that correct? Cash was better than people were expecting, not better than we were expecting. Obviously we've done a lot of due diligence. Got it. A good part of the fact that we ended the year in cash with, you know, those huge outlays during the year, particularly in the last quarter, when we also had a period of time where we weren't taking very many reservations and taking a lot of cancellations. GBP 115 million of cash with GBP 300 million cash out the door in November, plus fees, as well as, you know, the other things I talked about, dividends and the shared buyback through the summer of GBP 35 million, was definitely better than our expectations. It was equally a good performance in Countryside Partnerships as it was in Vistry Partnerships. A good opening cash position as we got to September, and that was kept up as we went through to our year end. Understood. That's helpful. Thank you. Next one's, again, just a bit of a check-in on Countryside. Where are we on manufacturing? You know, are you any more encouraged about how that could? Yeah. Benefit the wider group? You know, I'm just curious about your thoughts there. Yeah. Again, manufacturing, when the more we got into the due diligence, we thought this was going to be, you know, it went from seven or eight on the strategic list of why we're doing this, to top five points. One, the, they have three factories, Knaresborough, Warrington, and the Barton one. Barton was written off within those numbers I told you earlier with Countryside at the end of September. We are in, at Vistry, a very good place with it on our books for, you know, basically GBP 1. We will be reopening the Barton facility in the H2 of this year. The other two facilities are good facilities. They are both performing very, very well. We will probably be moving from closed panel to open panel timber frame going forward and then back towards closed panel as we get better at doing it. The take-up within the Countryside Partnerships business of Vistry, as well as house building, will mean that it will be fully utilized. The issue that Countryside had, and I, you know, speaking openly, I don't understand it, is they were using other manufacturers in different parts of the group for timber frame, where they might have saved GBP 10 a house, but of course, they were losing money at group because it was underutilized. Mm-hmm. This year it will be fully utilized. Our strategy over the next five years will be to go to the majority of our production will be timber frame going forward. We've got a great platform and far better than we thought during the due diligence and far better than we thought at the completion of the acquisition. Extremely excited about what we've got there with timber frame. Thank you, Greg. The final one, there seems to be a little less mention of incentives in your statement, in your commentary there. I'm just wondering if you've taken a different approach to others, and perhaps you could just flesh out kind of what your approach to incentivizing customers early this year is. Okay. Speaking very openly, as I always try to do, if you were to just take a scenario, none of these numbers are completely accurate, but just go with me. If we had a house on the market for GBP 300,000 in November, we always had at least a 2% differential between the asking price and our forecast price. We would have had a house for GBP 300,000, and we needed to get GBP 294,000 to achieve our forecast. We instructed all of our business units to put prices up. Not massively, but tweak them up in December, which is a notoriously slow time to sell houses. We put prices up. That GBP 300,000 would have gone to GBP 302,000, GBP 303,000, GBP 304,000, and up to GBP 305,000. The forecast price of GBP 294,000 would have stayed in place. What we're finding is you do need to entice purchasers today more than you did back in May, June 2022, when the price was the price. We are also, and we will be successful and are actually seeing some success as we speak. You can call it a bun fight if you like, but particularly starting with the sub-subcontractors who have had a great time over the last two years. We aren't a million miles off on closing one or two of our sites and saying to the supply chain, "You can come back in when you give us a discount that we're looking for." To quote the Jerry Maguire film, what we're saying to the supply chain is, "Help me to help you. Do you want to build two units on this site this year, or do you want to build four? If you want to build four, we need a discount from the inflated levels that you've got." Those discount levels will go straight to sales. That GBP 294 forecast price will actually every GBP 1,000 we save on the supply chain, we'll reduce that on a life of site basis. We're aiming to get to somewhere around GBP 287, GBP 288 as a base price with an asking price of somewhere between GBP 302 and GBP 305 using that example I've just given you. Does that make sense? It does. We are, and I'm encouraging our team to give incentives to continue to drive sales. Last week, which was a very good week. Week two last week was in line with 2019, kind of 0.35, second week of January, pretty good. We actually achieved in excess of GBP 300,000 above our forecast price. Thanks for that, Greg. Very clear. Thanks, Chris. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Will Jones of Redburn. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks. Morning. I'll try three if I can, please. Just coming on to that point around the sales rate being in line with 2019, is it fair to say that's the Group, including Partnerships versus the business excluding Partnerships or just pure housebuilding back in 2019? It's probably, 'cause we had we didn't have a partnerships business in 2019. 2019 sales levels were based on purely Bovis. Yeah. We've slightly beaten in the second week that 2019 level, which, yes, Will, does include, you know, Bovis, Linden and partnerships. Presumably the comparison versus if you were looking at sales rates in Q4 versus 2019, they wouldn't have been close to 2019. I don't think we've got the comparative, but just wondering if it's, if it better stacked versus 2019 than it was in November and December. I appreciate it. Do you wanna take that, Earl? Yeah. Earl? Sorry, you're trying to compare back the 0.45 to what it was in 2019. Yeah. Yeah. To be honest, it wasn't much different is the truth if you wanna look back. I mean, obviously November, December is always a slower period in any event. You know, where Greg's talking about 2019, you know, absolutely what we're doing is looking forward in terms of, you know, tracking against 2019. You know, those numbers are all out there. I think for the full year, 2019, we were at 0.58 over the full year. We're looking to track along that progress with three weeks in. Quoting our finance team, Will, the prospect levels since Boxing Day have gone through the roof. Up to and including now? Okay. Second was just more of a general one. If you could just update us with partnerships around, I guess, the behavior and attitudes of your key stakeholders, the housing associations or the PRS players, whoever you might wanna call out. Okay. I would say registered providers, housing associations are pretty much there or thereabouts back to normal business. I would say local authorities are as well. Registered, PRS, a little bit behind, but in a number of instances where they left the market, they are now back in the market. The hesitancy is the levels of discount they are looking for compared to what we're prepared to give them. PRS back in the market, we're just the normal, you know what is the market today? Discussions are going on with PRS providers and housing associations. Registered providers, as I say, are back in the market. The example I gave in my opening remarks there was pretty compelling in so far as we have been talking about this site at Peel Hall for the last two or three months and Torus with us. Actually, this is 1,200 units, the land value in excess of GBP 100 million. The housing association and our partnerships business exchanged and completed on that on Friday of last week. Right up to date. Thank you. The last one was just, now you've closed the books on calendar 2022, if you could give us the approximate pro forma volumes in Housebuilding and Partnerships, the two businesses, please. Now? Or Ken? Sorry. Well, you're asking for pro forma volumes for 2022? Yeah, but it's countryside and the enlarge group, I suppose, across the 12 months. I don't know if they're numbers you have to hand. Just the countryside bit, Tim. Countryside volumes for the last year were around just above 5,500. Great. You've got the Vistry Partnerships numbers in a second. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. Thanks, Will. Thank you. We'll now take our next questio-n from Greg at UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Hi, Greg. Just to be clear, did you say 0.35 for the first couple of weeks? Is that right? I mean, I was just looking back at the time. I know we never got this sort of granularity, I think for the first seven weeks at the time, back in 2019, you were doing a bit shy of 0.6, I think. I don't know if that's a reference. Yeah. Well. Yeah. Well. Yeah, yeah. That includes the first week. Of course. where you don't, you know, really sell anything in the second week. it'll get progressively better. Yeah. If it follows those trends as we go forward. Week one was less than week two, and our forecast for week three is more than week two. Yeah, we're only speak. Please, it's three weeks. three weeks is three weeks. Of course. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. If you add it together and prospect levels, sometimes if you talk these things through, in a semi-positive way as opposed to negative way as per the press, maybe there will be a bit of momentum around it. We're not making, the prospect levels have been absolutely dramatic. Prospect levels is where sales eventually come from. That trend seems to be, seems to be coming through, you know, with what we're expecting during the course of this week for sales. Okay, brilliant. The second question was just maybe if you could just sort of go through, you know, as best as you can judge at this point, sort of handicapping the outlook, I guess, around kind of forward, you know, you've opening forward sales position, let's say, in house building deliverable this year. Then, you know, you've given us a site guidance, and I think we can then all take our own view on. Yeah. On sales, right? If you could just help us out sort of how to calculate that? Yeah. That would be really helpful. Maybe similar for partnerships, which may be easier, right? Because you've got Yeah. Basically, if you just take the Vistry part of the business, we go into this year with a GBP 4.6 billion order book, which includes Countryside. Of that, GBP 2.6 billion is Vistry, which coincides with the carry forward position, even taking into account the last quarter of 2021. In keeping it very simple, housing's carry forward position is down GBP 300 million, which from what I've seen over the last week, that puts us in a favorable position. That's because we did take a few bold deals in October, November, seeing what was happening to the market and wanted to go into 2023 in a strong position. Partnerships carry forward position because it is, as you all know, countercyclical and highly resilient. Their order book was up from GBP 1.3 billion-GBP 1.6 billion in round figures. The order book is the same, housing down, give or take GBP 300 million, partnerships up GBP 300 million. The partnerships number I'm not surprised with. I was particularly pleased that we had a carry forward position of around 23% on private housing just in our housing business. Add the affordable to it, 15% and we're at a, in the housebuilding business, a carry forward position of 38%. That was encouraging and far better than I thought as we were going through October, November. If you went back to August, September, I was expecting housebuildings have a carry forward, a really historically strong carry forward position of 30% on the private sales, even more. We ended the year following a very poor final quarter with 23%. In my 40 odd years in housebuilding, a 23% private carry forward ain't bad. It ain't as good as we've seen over the last two years, but in historical terms, it ain't too bad against the background of firm prices. Okay. Maybe asking it differently in terms of the coverage for this year, sort of how much is locked in out of that GBP 4.6 billion book, how much flow is this year? Of that GBP 4.6 billion, about, I think I'm right in saying about GBP 2.3 billion in partnerships and housing is in for this year. Okay. That's right. Okay. Similar question, I guess, on the margin embedded in that. I mean, it sounds like you took a few bulk deals here and there, but, like ballpark, is it similar to the 23 growth in house building and maybe 10% EBIT in partnerships, or is any moves. We would hope that the 23% growth margin will stick in housebuilding this year. Yeah, I would be confident that the 10% in Partnerships will rise slightly because we'll have a greater amount of mixed tenure within the enlarged Partnerships portfolio, particularly coming from Countryside. Okay. That's including Countryside? Yeah. Okay. We would expect it to rise from the 10%, housing to stay at the 23% growth, the operating margin in the enlarged partnerships business to be to grow from the 10%, not dramatically, but to grow. Okay. That, just to be clear, that assumes sort of pricing sticks. Excluding any potential price moves either way. Well, we've got a bit covered. Sure. We've allowed for that. Yeah, broadly, pricing levels remaining relatively firm, although we have a little bit to deal with, you know, some marginal price reductions. Okay. And, and. Greg. Sorry. Yeah. Greg, just to. Since September. Yeah. Greg, I was just gonna add, just as Greg was saying, you know, we are, you know, into our supply chain in terms of those costs and, you know, we may give some of that back through discounts. That is absolutely the, you know, ambition target to hold the margins. The other thing I would just highlight in partnership Why don't you tell the audience what we're targeting from our supply chain? Well, yeah. Given the increases we've had over the last 18, you know, 24 months, you know, we're after significant reductions in the labor rates. We're also renegotiating with all of our material suppliers, through the three months of the year, you know, based on, you know, the enlarged group and, you know, obviously combining Countryside with Vistry. We're looking for significant reductions from the supply chain. The other point I was gonna make to Greg was. Sorry, Earl. Greg, just so that you know, that is, you know, We're assuming we will get those gains, and we're confident we will. We're not assuming that goes to the bottom line. That we'll deal with. That's the buffer between any movement in selling prices. Yeah. Correct. Greg, just, you were asking about margins. I just wanna make the point that partnerships, the absolute priority is the return on capital. We said that at the time of the acquisition. You know, we're working through that. The 40% return on capital in partnerships is the key priority. You know, we will work the margin, and we may give away a little of the margin in order to hit that return on capital. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Greg. Thank you. We'll now take our next question from John Fraser-Andrews at HSBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you. Morning, gents. I'll have two please. Hi, John. Could you just clarify, you did say, Greg, the GBP 4.6 billion, how much of that is for 2023? GBP 2.3 billion. Sorry, Greg? GBP 2.3 billion. Thank you. Then, in terms of strategy in partnerships, you clearly have your forward order books up, well, in Vistry Partners, 25%. Does that give you comfort, and given the levers you've got to push volume growth in that business regardless of the market for private sales? Yes, it does. In all of the partnerships stuff, we build in an allowance for increased costs, which we've needed over the last two years for obvious reasons. One of the benefits that the partnerships business will get over the next 12 months is all the subcontractors are looking to first and foremost, get onto a partnership scheme. If you've got a housing scheme on the left-hand side of the road of 200 houses, and on the right-hand side you've got a partnership scheme with 200 houses, the subcontractors are pretty savvy, and they know that they wanna work on the right-hand side of the road on that partnership scheme because those 200 houses will all be built. Mm-hmm. On the left-hand side of the road, the 200 houses, the build will depend on the sales rate. And so we're seeing already our partnerships deal, our partnerships business getting some great deals. I believe they will not need the fixed price allowance that they've got. I think the fixed price allowance they've got will help the business and their margin, and also get the return on capital to 40%, particularly from a Countryside perspective. Also, I think they will see some significant savings during the course of this year as there is a clamber by the supply chain to get to those partnership schemes. Just a couple more on partnerships. Does that entail shifting within this year potentially a higher amount of pre-sold or is that, is the die already cast, the private element, your reliance on the market? No, we don't buy any land in Vistry Partnerships without it being at least 50% pre-sold on average, probably nearer 60%. Countryside have their own way of doing things. I would suggest from September, not the completion date of the 11th of November, the Countryside team have been operating as Vistry, 'cause they knew obviously completion would take place and anything that they are looking at buying or have bought has been on a +50% pre-sold basis. Earl's previous point there with regards to return on capital, which is absolutely right, we think that Vistry Partnerships, the margin at 10% and +40% return on capital, that will just carry on. The Countryside bit, we might lose some of their margin to absolutely generate some bold deals to bring their return on capital more in line with the 40%. We're determined to end 2023 with an enlarged partnerships business at a 40% combined return on capital. That will bring the Countryside margin, which was greater than the Vistry margin, down a bit, but still, I think give us some scope to increase the 10% that Vistry performed last year. Understood. Last one on Part L delivery. Is that targeted for volume growth this year? I think for volume growth, no, it'll be broadly stable. Thereafter or is that still? Oh, thereafter. To emphasize next 10 year? Yeah, thereafter to grow, because for it to grow this year, we would need some of those, contracts and, things in place. Yes, from 2024 onwards to grow. Thanks, Greg. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Aynsley Lammin at Investec. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks very much. Just two from me, please. First of all, just on, I think at the time of the acquisition you mentioned kind of or hinted at average debt around GBP 300 million, loan creditor, around GBP 600 million for FY 2023. Just kind of interest, obviously a big macro risk to numbers. Outside of that, net cash position a lot stronger at the end of the year. Any kind of comments to add to that in terms of guidance around that balance sheet to issues? Secondly, just on the kind of recent trade in, obviously saying, you know, prospective traffic very good and need to convert those kind of that interest. Just interested, what's your kind of view of the, you know, what gets people over the line? Is it mainly confidence given all the negative media coverage and expectations, maybe a fall in house prices? Or is it the mortgage market and interest rates and an affordability issue? You know, interested where you've seen kind of mortgage rates and, you know, particularly for the first time buyer, how much of a constraint the affordability will still be into this kind of spring selling season? Thanks. Okay, I'll take the latter one. Tim, while I'm talking, you can do the first one. So we would say what we're kind of seeing is that in the first part of 2022, you had a great mortgage market, very low rates on a historical basis, and they were stable. Following on from, as you know, the September budget, products were actually withdrawn to huge media hype. When they actually came back on the market, there were big increases, particularly on two and five year fixed rate mortgages. A purchaser who was looking around to buy a house in April, May, was all of a sudden, one, if they could get the mortgage, was going, "You know, this is gonna cost me an awful lot more if they could get the mortgage offer than what I would have got in April, May. I'm gonna sit and think about this for a minute." You then get to Christmas and you get to the first three weeks of this year, typically, I'm talking now and there's been one or two examples of this, the purchaser is now looking at something and going, "Actually, that mortgage that you can get now," which is still higher than it was in the H1. These mortgage rates are falling as we speak, still higher, and they will remain higher than what you could have got at the start of 2022. People are now comparing it against what they were looking at in September, October, and it's a lot less. Against that, I don't know if you monitor the rental market. I mean, we're in that great sector where you've got to live somewhere, and if you don't buy a house, you have to rent. Even with the inflated mortgage levels of September, October, November, I would still put to you that it was still more expensive to rent because rental levels have risen dramatically than it was to actually buy. We don't believe from a first time buyer perspective or any buyer perspective, we're seeing too many issues with affordability. We're actually seeing lots of commentary coming back about, well, I see the new house is the same price as a second-hand house. How is that when it's a typical three-bedroom house compared to, you know, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, three bed second-hand house, it's gonna be GBP 2,000-GBP 3,000 less to heat. That's becoming more and more compelling. It's a combination, interest rates falling, interest rates being a mortgage market being competitive and readily available. It being cheaper now than it was in October, November to actually pay that mortgage against the background of rental charges continuing to rise. I think people can see inflation starting to come back against that. Fuel is dropping and energy prices are dropping. Whether that stays that way, we will see. That's what seems to be happening. We're looking at prospect levels that aren't a million miles off where they were in 2022. I don't think we've ever seen prospect levels rise over such a short period as we have seen since Boxing Day. There's obviously some positive sentiment out there. All of that is against the backdrop of there's a shortage of houses in the first place. Do you wanna take the first one, Tim? Sure. Yeah. Sure. I think, in terms of net debt, obviously, we'd be hoping to carry forward the over delivery from the year end into 2023. I'm not gonna be pushing to nudge your net debt numbers up significantly. Hopefully, there's a small upside for net debt for the full year. Land credits is roughly in the right place. I think we're somewhere between GBP 600-700 at year-end. All right. Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Anthony Manning at Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Could you just give us a bit more color on the reasons or the factors behind the better net cash position at the end of the year? Secondly, could you give us a bit more color as well on the, what makes you more positive about the level of synergies you can achieve? Lastly, just touching on your comments on the land market. I think maybe differently from peers, you're seeing some opportunities and could you give us an idea of the group strategy next year when it comes to land? Yeah. On, on land, the strategy is to, we will be continuing to buy, but we will be highly selective and very, very prudent and are looking for margins ahead of 25% to give us some cover, and we're looking for better payment terms than we saw in 2021 and 2022. I would be suggesting that from a land perspective, we are looking at a replacement in house building of land as opposed to any growth for 2024. That's the first part. Earl, Tim, do you wanna take the other two parts of the questions? I'll happily take synergies, I'll leave Tim to talk on cash. On synergies, I mean, basically we can already see how we can overachieve. If you go back to the transaction, we've put synergies into four buckets. You know, we can see today how we can overachieve on all of those. In some areas, we have already overachieved in terms of what we are predicting going forward. You know, that would be some of the central costs, including some of the third party spend, where there's overlap between the two PLCs. You know, putting the partnerships business together, which we did before Christmas, and the closure of the offices that Greg mentioned coming through. You know, if anything, the procurement opportunities for the enlarged group, once we've got a better knowledge, within Countryside, you know, are bigger than we expected. There's group deals I've described earlier. Getting commonality and standardization across the group, whether it's finishing spec or the way we construct and even looking forward in terms of our approach to Future Homes. How we'll build to Part L and F and even on to 2025. Across all those areas we can see the opportunity, you know, hence the positive statement this morning. Tim? Sorry, Earl. Just adding to that. We saw a huge amount of opportunity in the run-up to completion on November 11th for synergies. We are really encouraged with what we've already done in the run-up to Christmas and what we can still see. Yeah, I can't say it stronger than we are very, very confident that we will be well in excess of GBP 50 million annualized savings, and the GBP 19 million for 2023 is a major beat. Sorry, Tim. On the cash piece, it really was strong operational and working capital performance across the business. That's both the former Vistry and the former Countryside pieces. Countryside came into the transaction, having had a good working capital performance up to its year end in September, which the business has been able to maintain through to December. On the Vistry side, both in housebuilding and Partnerships, it's been a good quarter. Some of which was around, you know, concerns or contingencies not being required because the cash continued to flow well. You know, that some of the concern or the reserve in the forecast didn't materialize. As I say, nothing specific, it was really across the business, strong performance. Really helpful. Thank you. Thank you. We'll move on to our next question from Glynis Johnson at Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you. Morning. Two if I may. The first one's probably got a few bits and pieces on it. You talked in the statement about some of the Countryside Partnerships sites, actually being more akin to housebuilding and going to housebuilding. I wonder if you could just elaborate on that. Then also, you know, help us out in terms of, you know, what is the pro forma of the group now in terms of partnerships versus housebuilding? Sort of, you know, following on from that, how should we think about outlets, particularly through 2023 within housebuilding? Just so we can get some idea of the size. Then second of all, what are you hearing from government? What are the talks been in terms of the long form? What are the discussions been in terms of policy? Particularly, I'm thinking you guys may have a slightly more informed view in terms of, you know, the affordable side, but anything in terms of government would be useful. Okay. On, on the, well, I'll let you take the first question. On the long form, Glynis, the negotiations are continuing, and I think they are, I would, I would suggest edging forward. I don't think we'll be a million miles away from signing it. Importantly, we've now got in round figures a GBP 300 million provision, GBP 200 million Countryside, GBP 100 million Vistry. Again, we've been very, very confident of the GBP 100 million in Vistry for some time. Troo months in to the acquisition of Countryside, we're very, very confident as well with the GBP 200 million provision within the Countryside part of the business. GBP 300 million overall, we are very comfortable. The only thing I'd say to that is I suspect we, like others, didn't allow for getting any of that back, whether it be from warranty providers, insurances, subcontractors or indeed contractors. We've become more and more confident the more we get into things that we will see some recovery on that. The long form, yeah, moving along slowly. I don't think it's 1 million miles away from being signed. We remain very, very happy with both parts of our provision totaling GBP 300 million. Is that okay, Glynis? Oh, sorry. There's one other thing I was gonna say, we did notice through Christmas, I don't know if you all did, but the Welsh Government put out a notice basically saying of their intention. In Wales, Help to Buy doesn't finish until December this year. The Wales put out an intention that they are gonna extend it till December 2025, that's a further two years and increase the cap from GBP 250 to GBP 300,000, which is encouraging. That's an interesting dynamic. That's the Welsh Government, and I am Welsh, but that's the Welsh Government very early doors being proactive and in extending a conservative and of course, Wales is Labour controlled parliament, a conservative initiative for a further two years, both in, you know, in two years, as well as increasing the cap from GBP 250 to GBP 300. I don't know if that's making the U.K. government, the English government, think about Help to Buy or anything that might replace it. We're assuming there won't be, but that was quite an interesting announcement by the Welsh Government. Earl or Tim on the first parts of Glynis' question. Yeah, I, have at it, Greg. Glynis, I think really just a follow-up from what we did say when we did the transaction. A few parts to this in terms of what will come from the Countryside business into house building. We talked about the legacy sites as Countryside, have disclosed. You know, they, they really are house building sites in our view. There is a small number of active sites that I would say you look at the ASP, you look at the mix of private, versus affordable. You, you literally look at the site and you would say, "That is a house building site, not a partnership site." There's a handful of those. Again, as we said at the time, there was a number of land sales planned within the Countryside business. We're not gonna do those land sales. We'll actually develop those, and some of those will be house building. Some of the Countryside larger sites, we will do exactly what we do in Vistry and, you know, where we've got the advantage of deploying both partnerships and house building on some of those sites. That's what we're doing overall. If you were to look at the Vistry house building business, I would've said outlets, you know, pretty much flat year-on-year, they're around 140. There could be, you know, somewhere between 15 and 20 outlets coming through from the Countryside business. You know, that range really around, you know, those large sites and the potential, you know, land sale sites that we're working through at the minute. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now take our last question from Clyde Lewis at Peel Hunt. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Morning, Greg. Morning, Earl. Morning, Tim. Morning. Apologize if this was asked earlier. Unfortunately, I got caught up and didn't join until a few minutes in. Have you said anything or could you say a little bit about what experience you're seeing in terms of the housing associations and local authorities and also sort of the PRS customers, the, you know, the buyers and. Yeah. How their appetite has evolved, you know, particularly through the crazy autumn that we've seen and, you know, particularly I suppose in reference to the sort of funding lines that they've got and how that's sort of playing out, if you like, into, to the conversations that you're having with them at the moment. We did cover that a bit, Clyde, but where we've got to is that. You're right, following on from the disastrous budget, not only did it affect the private market, but as would be expected, it affected the PRS and affordable market as they all took stock as to what's happening. Before Christmas, if Stephen Teagle was on the call, he would say that the registered providers, housing associations and local authorities are pretty much back to where they were before the budget. We had a great example of that only on Friday. We completed on a huge or exchanged and completed on a huge deal in Warrington, 1,200 units in excess of GBP 100 million land value. We're doing it in a joint venture with Torus Housing Association, who are the largest housing provider in the northwest. They're funding the majority of it. It's in excess of a GBP 100 million acquisition. Their appetite is right back and their funding lines are allowing them to do it. With regards to the PRS market, the PRS market definitely closed pretty much for two or three months. We are now seeing encouragingly all of the PRS providers that we and Countryside historically dealt with now reentering the market. They're not as far on as the housing associations because there is, you know, some negotiation between us and them where they seem to be thinking the market's in a different place to where we believe it is. There's arguments or discussions, if I should say at the moment, with regards to pricing levels. PRS, no discussions at all. October, November, first part of December, they're now starting to dip their feet back into the market, but are trying to get their heads around what is the market and what is the market price. Housing associations and local authorities, we would say the market's pretty much back to where it was before the budget. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Thanks, Clyde. I think Laura, was that the last question? We have another two which just came in after that. Is it okay to take those? Yes, it is. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Charlie Campbell at Liberum. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks very much for taking the question. No problem, Charlie. It's just a very, very quick one on sites and house building. The comment is that you expect sites to be flat. That I understand is a Vistry only comment. There might be some Countryside over the top of that. The Vistry number being flat, is that a sort of a reflection of caution on your part? You might have grown sites, but not the time to do it now? Is that kind of planning getting more difficult and site progression is being held up by planning? Just sort of to understand the thinking around that. It's more to do with caution, but there is a bit in there about planning as well. I have to say, Charlie, and you tell me, but the group, including Countryside, have had a purple patch with planning permissions coming through in October, November and December. The planning environment remains disjointed, difficult, et cetera, et cetera. For whatever reason, we're going into 2023 off the back of a great run on achieving planning. Our outlet members remaining flat would be, yes, in part to do with planning, but more in part to do with us remaining cautious. Truth is. Sorry, Charlie. To add to that, I mean some of what I described with Countryside, you know, something that was gonna be a land sale that we're gonna develop or an extra parcel, you know, on a large Countryside site, I mean, that is growth in outlets in my view. You know, it's the Vistry standalone was flat and we knew Countryside was coming. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Charlie. I think there was one other, Laura. Yes. There is, and that would be from Ami Galla at Citigroup. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you. Just a couple of follow-ups from me. The first one was on the overhead base. Can you give us some pro forma numbers of what the overhead of the combined group was pre-synergies in 2022? The second one was just on WIP flows into 2023. How should we think about that? Is there scope for any WIP release as we kind of think about 2023 and 2024 in the business? We. Yeah, go on, Tim. Sorry. In terms of overhead pro forma with Countryside included, I think in the past. Well, I'm looking at Tim Lawlor as well. I think we'll come back to you on that, Ami Galla. I mean, I think you can just take a full year number from Countryside previously. You know, what you will have for Vistry in terms of the pro forma before the synergies, we've obviously given you the synergy numbers through the transaction, and Greg's given you a clear indication that we're gonna beat those in terms of what comes off those, what comes off those numbers. Your second one was about, was that WIP release? WIP progress investments. I mean, should we consider any scope for release of WIP as we kind of think about 23? Well, I mean, for a while now, obviously, in terms of the market and we said in the statement, you know, we have got absolutely the WIP controls in place as you would expect. We are, you know, releasing work in progress based on our sales rates. We were in the position because of such a great period, 18 months running up of, you know, not having, you know, really having stock. You know, we are progressing in line with that will also, you know, that will be the position. Reflected at the end of last year, because of where we are and those risk controls will stay in place. You know, we'll take the opportunity in the market to invest, based on the sales rates and prospect numbers that we're seeing at the minute. Back to what Greg was saying about the early signs for this year. Okay. Thank you. Can I just jump in, Ami, just on the overheads. Yes. I think the overhead proportion in Countryside is very similar to the overhead proportion that was in the Vistry Group before. In terms of the sort of% of revenue, roughly around sort of 60%, 67% of revenue. You can probably extrapolate what you had before from the Vistry Group for the newly combined group. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further questions in queue. I will now hand it back to you for any additional or closing remarks. Thank you. Thanks, Laura. All I would say, I think, listening to ourselves there, the key takeaways are, one, pricing, remains firm. Two it's been an encouraging start. Prospect levels and reservation levels, cancellation levels to 2023. I would then say that we are entering into some pretty decent negotiations with our supply chain over price cuts. We've seen nothing but price increases over the last two years against a background of fuel and energy, falling in some places, some people would say energy prices tumbling. The acquisition, we're delighted with the acquisition of Countryside. Three months in, it looks even better than it did at the time of the acquisition. We think the prospects, the bringing together and having a huge exposure in the growth market of partnerships is going to be great, and we believe that the synergies, you know, on an ongoing basis and in 2023 will be greater. Yeah. That's all helped by a housing forward order book of GBP 1 billion, only GBP 300 million down on the previous year. We're quite encouraged by that. The Vistry Partnerships business standalone showing its resilience. The order book up from 1.3 in round numbers to 1.6. A GBP 2.6 billion order book in Vistry. Add to that GBP 2 billion from Countryside, which is obviously Partnerships and you can see we've got a great deal of forward visibility and are in pretty good shape. On that, thanks very much for your time. Hopefully, we've answered all those questions. If you've got any further questions, don't hesitate to feed them through to Tim Norwell and Susie Bell. Thank you very much. All the best. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. Stay safe. You may now disconnect.