Taylor Wimpey Share News (TW.)

House builder Taylor Wimpey said it traded at the upper end of company expectations during the first half of their financial year, after improvements across most of its markets in the UK, and said it remains confident of hitting targets for the year."Our businesses in the South East and Midlands regions performed particularly well in the first half of the year," it said in a trading update. Taylor Wimpey expects to report improvements across all of its key financial metrics for the first half to July 31st and expects to report a UK operating profit margin for the first half of 2013 of over 13% compared to 11.2% for the same period last year.In Spain, although the housing market continues to be challenging, acquisition of new outlets has led to a significant increase in sales in the period and is expected to boost the group's 2014 performance, it said.Commenting on current trading in the UK, Taylor Wimpey said: "During the first half of 2013, we have been operating in a UK housing market that has shown measurable improvement for the first time since the downturn of 2007/2008. We consider this to be down to a general economic improvement, better mortgage availability and the direct impact of the Government schemes.""We are confident of delivering our full year expectations, and demonstrating further steps in our goal of margin improvement, which remains our primary focus. In this improved market, our strong order book and outlet position is likely to lead to continued volume growth in the second half," it added.Net debt at June 30th 2013 is around £70m down from £135.2m for the same period in 2012.CJ