Our finances remain resilient despite the challenging economic environment. We continue to invest extensively in existing homes and have a strong development pipeline to help alleviate the housing crisis.
Prudent planning
While continuing to invest in the day-to-day running of our organisation, we’re not shy to acknowledge the external pressures posed by rising costs and higher interest rates. During the past year, we had an appropriate pause on new development commitments and hedged our exposure to rising interest rates. These were an important response to the difficult economic backdrop.
We continue to manage our finances carefully, maintaining strong liquidity so that funds are available when we need them. We regularly stress test our long-term financial plan.
Surplus
We reinvest all our surpluses in full, as well as an extra £89m of debt funding in 2022-23. We’re also seeing the benefits of the first year of efficiencies from the merger with Catalyst. These have helped to partially offset lower margins from increased investment and absorb the impact of rising costs.
Risk
Given the current high level of inflation and ongoing difficult market conditions, we closely monitor our appetite for, and exposure to, risk. As well as the day-to-day operations, we’re keeping a close eye on the integration of all parts of the organisation following the merger.
We’re doing this so that the risk associated with major change doesn’t impact our ability to continually improve the services we offer our residents.
Borrowing
We borrow to invest and deliver much needed new homes. As of the end of March 2023, our available debt funding was £6.1bn.
You can see more details about our borrowing and how we fund our operations in the financials section of our annual report. Read our latest annual report.
Credit ratings
Following Catalyst joining the Group, the latest credit ratings for Peabody are: