UK housing market fears as Marshalls and Purplebricks shares slide | Housing market

Housing market

Problems at landscaping supplier and online estate agent prompt share dips at housebuilders

A profit warning from the UK driveways to roofing firm Marshalls and a gloomy outlook from the online estate agent Purplebricks, which is fighting for its survival, have prompted sharp falls in their share prices and spooked the wider housing sector.

A day before its annual investor meeting, Marshalls, which produces landscaping, building and roofing products, said like-for-like sales had fallen by 14% year on year to £227m in the four months to 30 April. Including the acquisition of the pitched roof maker Marley a year ago, sales rose 12%.

As a result, Marshalls expects full-year pre-tax profits to come in below analysts’ expectations of £83m. This compares with an adjusted profit of £90m last year. The news triggered a 13% drop in its share price while shares in housebuilders such as Berkeley Group, Barratt and Persimmon also fell.

The company said the sales decline reflected the uncertain macro-economic climate, a reduction in new housebuilding and ongoing weakness in private housing repairs, maintenance and investment activity.

The housing market has slowed sharply in the past six months as borrowing costs increased. House prices started falling after the turmoil in the mortgage market caused by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget last September. The Bank of England is expected to raise interest rates to 4.5% this week, which would be a 12th successive rise as it seeks to tame stubbornly high inflation.

Marshalls noted that the National House Building Council, which provides warranties for buyers of new-build homes, reported a 27% drop in the number of new homes started between January and March. Housebuilding fell at the sharpest pace for almost three years in April, according to the latest construction survey from S&P Global and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply released last week.

Marshalls said it acted quickly to cut costs and improve efficiencies, for example in concrete tile production lines. It laid off 70 people in non-manufacturing roles, such as sale and marketing, operational management and finance, which will save £3.5m a year. The group is focused on the UK construction market after disposing of its loss-making Belgian subsidiary.

Housing analyst Stephen Rawlinson at Applied Value said: “It’s obvious that markets in housing new-build and RMI are weaker but the decline in sales at Marshalls seems to be larger than the market and the competition is achieving and it also seems to have set expectations too high, we suspect.”

The online estate agent Purplebricks, which put itself up for sale in February after a profit warning, has reported a further worsening in trading. It said client instructions did not increase in recent months as expected, which will drag down revenues and earnings this year.

It said negotiations for a sale of the business were ongoing but any deal would “deliver returns to shareholders materially below the company’s current share price”.

This prompted Purplebricks, once seen as one of the digital technology pioneers that would shake up the property industry, to look at a potential fundraising again, but it feels that this still lacks the necessary support, and will talk to shareholders about their views on the future of the company.

The Purplebricks share price crashed more than 60% on Tuesday morning to just 2p.