Published on: January 18, 2022

Earnings beat estimates, driven by BTR hunger

Residential-for-rent developer and manager Watkin Jones today delivered an 11% rise in PBT to £51.1m for FY2021, beating our estimate of £50.0m by 2.2%. There were similar ‘beats’ in EPS and dividend, at 16.3p and 8.2p, respectively, driven by strong operational delivery and cost control. We have maintained our earnings and dividend estimates for FY2022E, growing at over 6%. We have also introduced forecasts for FY2023E, which assume accelerated earnings growth of 31% as the strong development pipeline in the Build to Rent division, fuelled by investor demand, feeds into revenue.