Housebuliding shares slumped after the Brexit vote, but they’ve performed well today on first-half results from Persimmon. Figures are up across the board, and chief executive Jeff Fairburn said that despite the referendum result, “customer interest since then has been robust“.
A solid recovery
Housebuilding shares bottomed out on 6 July, and if you managed to time your buying right you’ll be sitting pretty today. Shares in Bellway (LSE: BWY), for example, have climbed by 38% since the crash, to 2,337p as I write, including a 5% gain today.
That’s still a fall of 14.5% since referendum day though. Is there any recovery left if you buy now? I’d say yes, because I really don’t think there’ll a significant long-term effect from leaving the EU — after all, the UK’s chronic housing shortage won’t suddenly vanish, will it? Bellway’s earnings and dividend forecasts have been scaled back slightly in the past couple of months, but not by a lot, and there’s still a large majority of analysts putting out a strong buy recommendation on Bellway.
Expectations for the year just ended in July put the shares on a P/E of only 7.7 with a predicted dividend yield of 4.3%. Granted, there’s a flat year for earnings forecast for 2017, but that’s surely way too cheap for a company in a solid long-term business. Results are due on 18 October.
More of the same
We see the same picture at Barratt Developments (LSE: BDEV), whose shares are up 3.6% to 480p so far today — and up 44% since 6 July, but still down 17% post-vote. The last trading statement we got from Barratt, on 13 July, reported a 5.3% rise in completions and estimated a 20% rise in pre-tax profit, with full results expected on 7 September.
At the time, chief executive David Thomas did say it was too early to understand the possible effects of Brexit, but he pointed to good mortgage availability and the ongoing undersupply of new homes as reasons to be cheerful — “we remain confident in the positive fundamentals of both the housing sector and our business,” he said.
Again, though there’s a slowdown expected in 2017, the latest forecasts still put Barratt shares on a P/E of under nine for the year just ended, with a big 6.7% dividend yield on the cards. The dividend won’t be as well covered as Bellway’s, but the shares still look very attractive to me.
Is biggest best?
My third pick today, and biggest of the three, is Taylor Wimpey (LSE: TW). After a 3.5% price rise today, to 164p, Taylor Wimpey shares are up 41.5% since 6 July — though still down 14.5% since the vote.
Again we’re looking at a modest downgrading of forecasts, but we also still see a robust buy consensus from the brokers. And again, fundamental valuations look very low with forward P/E multiples for December 2016 and 2017 of under 10 — not as low as the other two, but there are better dividends forecast, yielding 7% and 7.8%.
Taylor Wimpey’s year ends in December, and first-half results at the end of June showed another year of solid growth. It was only a very short time after the referendum, but according to chief executive Pete Redfern, customer confidence metrics were still solid.
