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 31^st 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 31^st 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."