Stephen Teagle says issues which led to underestimated build costs are ‘out of the rear view mirror’
Vistry has put the issues that led to successive profit warnings last year behind it, according to the head of its partnerships division, pointing to the renewal of the firm’s agreements with lenders as proof it had turned a corner.
Last week the housebuilder released interim results for the first six months of 2025, which showed an adjusted pre-tax profit of £80m, down a third on the £120.7m reported a year prior.
Speaking to Housing Today after the figures were published, Stephen Teagle said the drop reflected guidance given in profit warnings at the end of 2024.
“When we issued a profit warning in the second half of last year, we said that the impact of some of that will be in 2024, some in 2025 and a very small amount in 2026,” he said.
In each of the last three months of last year, the builder downgraded its forecasted profit, amounting to a total drop in expectations of more than 40%.
In its first two warnings, the firm blamed a “poor divisional culture” in its South region for underestimating build costs across a number of sites, with delays to expected year-end transactions and completions cited in the December announcement.
Teagle told Housing Today that the business had now “moved on” from the matter, having restructured part of the leadership team and its divisional structure.
“We’ve got a much improved operational environment, which will ensure that there’s no repetition,” he said.
“And in fact, that has been endorsed by the fact that we’ve now renewed our financial capacity with our banks, so all of our lenders have come back on board.
“They’re very happy with our control processes, very happy with where we are going as a business.”
He said that, were it not for the continuing “number impact”, it would be a non-issue. “It really is something that is very much out of the rear view mirror,” he said.
In its interim results, Vistry said it is expecting a “significant step up” in affordable housing contracts in the second half of this year and next due to new government funding and policies designed to help social landlords develop.
Teagle said the first half of the year had been “a transitional period as our partners move from one programme to another, and therefore their numbers are a little bit lower than first half last year”.
He said some of the affordable housing funding announced in the Autumn statement and in February this year had already been deployed and that he expected “a lot” of the £2bn top up announced in March would be deployed over the next two months.
Regarding the £39bn committed in the spending review to the new Social and Affordable Homes Programme, he said he expected Homes England to issue a prospectus in “the next few weeks” with “bids being worked on and submitted before the end of the calendar year”. “I’m very confident that those allocations will be made in the early part of next year to allow everybody to hit the ground running in March 2026,” he added.
He said the government had not only been “generous” but “entirely rational” in listening to the housing sector’s demands.
He praised the bridge funding between affordable housing programmes, which he said had “never existed in previous transitions from one programme to the next”.
Teagle refused to put a number of homes Vistry expected to deliver this year, but said it would be “broadly similar” to the 17,225 built last year.
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