Barratt says pretax loss narrows – Yahoo! News UK
Barratt says pretax loss narrows – Yahoo! News UK
The UK's largest housebuilder on Wednesday reported a pretax profit, after exceptional items, of 178.4 million pounds in the six months to end December, compared with a pretax loss of 594.5 million last year.
The group reported an exceptional item of 129.9 million on an amended financing arrangement, while the average selling price rose by 3.5 percent to 166,300 pounds.
“The value of our forward order book is now up 27 percent year-on-year and with our ongoing focus on optimising selling prices we are expecting to see significant improvements in operating margin in the second half,” chief executive Mark Clare said in the company's interim statement.
(Reporting by Lorraine Turner; editing by Rhys Jones)
($1=.6482 Pound)
