By Suban Abdulla and Aby Jose Koilparambil
(Reuters) -British homebuilder Taylor Wimpey said it had started a round of job cuts and more could be on the way as it seeks to reduce costs after flagging weaker sales and forecasting it would build about a quarter fewer homes this year than in 2022.
Britain’s largest homebuilders have already cut back their building targets as higher mortgage costs and economic uncertainty depressed buyer demand.
“Some roles were made redundant, some were actually vacant following the recruitment fees we had undertaken earlier in the year and we deployed some employees to other parts of the business that require them,” Chief Executive Jennie Daly told Reuters on Thursday.
The redundancies were across all the departments of the business, Daly said but did not specify how many of its workforce of around 5,000 could be affected, adding that consultations were ongoing.
The company in January said that it was expecting to generate annualised savings of about 20 million pounds ($23.95 million) from cost-saving steps.
Taylor Wimpey’s sales rate for the year to the week ended Feb.
26 dropped to 0.62 homes per outlet, compared with 1.02 units a year earlier.
The order book – a key industry measure that gauges future sales performance – stood at 2.15 billion pounds ($2.58 billion) as of Feb.
26, down from 2.90 billion pounds a year earlier.
Taylor Wimpey now expects to build 9,000 to 10,500 homes in 2023, way below the 14,154 units it constructed a year ago.
Shares in the company fell nearly 1% in early trade.
The FTSE 100 developer’s operating profit for the year ended Dec.
31 grew more than 11% to 923.4 million pounds.
($1 = 0.8352 pounds)
(Reporting by Suban Abdulla in London and Aby Jose Koilparambil in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
