Newcastle-headquartered Grainger plc — the UK’s largest listed residential landlord — reported 11% growth in net rental income to £53.2 million for the six months ended March 31, 2024, and said its interim dividend increased 11% to 2.54p per share.
Grainger reported IFRS loss before tax of £31.2 million “reflecting the £58.8m impact from MDR tax treatment changes.”
The Newcastle firm said its £3.4 billion operational residential portfolio now totals 11,000 homes with a further 5,000 homes in its £1.5 billion build-to-rent investment pipeline.
Grainger CEO Helen Gordon said: “Grainger has delivered another strong operating performance over the past six months.
“Strong like-for-like rental growth and expansion from our successful pipeline delivery have driven further growth in net rental income and earnings and enable us to increase our dividend for the 17th consecutive time since our strategy reset began in 2016.
“Our portfolio occupancy remains high at 97.7% with customer affordability healthy, customer satisfaction and retention high, and rent arrears low.
“Despite some further yield expansion, strong rental growth has offset this with underlying property values broadly flat, demonstrating the performance of our platform and resilience of our asset class.
“Our sector’s positive market fundamentals and our strategic positioning mean that we expect rental growth to remain above the historical long-term average for the remainder of this year with scope for it to continue at elevated levels into 2025.
“Our strategic transformation to become the leading PRS build-to-rent player in the UK continues unabated with 80% of our portfolio now PRS assets and will culminate in our conversion to a REIT in October next year, enhancing returns for shareholders further.
“As we deliver our secured pipeline, benefitting from significant operational leverage as our portfolio grows and our cost base remains stable, we expect to deliver a sustainable Total Accounting Return of 8%, which we believe is a very attractive return on a risk-adjusted basis.”