Gleeson (Mj) Share Price (GLE)

Is this guy for real? That said, at least he bought 63 shares opposed to selling the same... Alan Martin, Financial Director, bought 63 shares in the company on the 7th May 2013 at a price of 264.50p. The Director now holds 10,760 shares.

amount of research, I have just bought into GLE ... The interim management statement reads well (follow link) with "The Board is encouraged by the achievements of both Gleeson Homes and Gleeson Strategic Land and remains confident that there will be further substantial improvements in the Group’s trading performance in both the current year and beyond. Although planning delays have created some uncertainty with respect to the number of land sales that will be achieved within the current financial year, the Group’s profit is still expected to be in line with, or possibly better than, market expectations." http://www.mjgleeson.com/assets/files/Interim%20Management%20Statement%201%20May%202013.pdf

Admittedly, Gleeson has taken a while to ditch its non-core operations and to refocus on what it does best. But that restructuring is now largely complete - leaving the group especially well-placed to benefit from the growing demand for land with planning consent. Add that to the comforting cash pile and the prospect of regular dividends from next near, and the shares - which trade at a 31 per cent discount to net assets - are due a re-rating........but as always dyor......

The housebuilding side has also been transformed, albeit after painful writedowns on land bought at the peak of the cycle. True, divisional turnover fell 8 per cent year on year to £32.6m, but only because of a shift away from lower-margin sales to registered social landlords. In fact, last year's £0.4m divisional operating loss was turned into £0.3m operating profit - reflecting an increase in private sales, from 170 units to 255, where margins are higher. And while the average selling price fell from £138,000 a unit to £118,000, this merely reflected the closing out of a high-price sales outlet in Ashford. Gleeson also has no debt pile to worry about and, at the full-year stage, reported a healthy net cash pile that's equivalent to 26p a share - that should help finance additional land purchases. And while Gleeson didn't pay a dividend in 2012, it has, in recent years, returned significant amounts of capital to shareholders through special dividends. Moreover, management reckons that land-bank sales could generate sufficient cash flow to enable regular dividend payments to begin in 2013

"We've been keeping our heads down while we've been restructuring and that's why none of the broking houses follows us at the moment," admits MJ Gleeson's (GLE) chief financial officer, Alan Martin. But while that means there's no analysts' earnings estimates, it's clear that the housebuilder and strategic land specialist is recovering fast - full-year figures for the year to the end of June revealed an operating profit before exceptional items of £0.3m; a big improvement on last year's £2.5m underlying loss. That restructuring effort has involved selling or winding down various non-core operations, including the disposal of three private financial initiative projects (PFIs) for a net £0.3m. That has left Gleeson focused on two businesses - building houses on brownfield sites in northern England, and buying greenfield sites in southern England with a view to boosting the land's value by obtaining planning consent. That latter operation is especially significant because housebuilders are increasingly looking to keep costs down by taking less land through the planning process themselves. Last year, for example, Barratt Developments (BDEV) pushed just 701 plots through the planning system from its 10,500-acre bank of land without permission. "Housebuilders have increased their appetite for over-ready land", notes Mr Martin. Gleeson has been making good progress on the back of that trend and, in the year to end-June, it made five land sales for a combined 115 acres and also secured five new sites covering 228 acres - taking the total land bank to 3,653 acres. The strategic land unit's turnover jumped 41 per cent year on year to £8.2m, lifting operating profit there by 37 per cent to £3.7m.

Chairman Dermot Gleeson said: "The group enjoys a very strong and competitive presence in the two sectors of the market on which it now concentrates: low cost housing development on brown field sites in the North of England; and the promotion through the planning system and subsequent sale of high value green field sites in the South." "The prospect of rising revenue from house sales combined with a planned reduction in the rate of growth of the land bank means that the group expects to become cash generative in the second half of the current financial year and, broadly, to remain so for the foreseeable future." Underlining its confidence in future trading, Gleeson said it hopes to be able to restart regular dividend payments in 2013.