Cairn Homes launches buyback as record order book improves visibility

Cairn Homes PLC on Wednesday raised annual guidance and boosted its shareholder returns, as it reported bumper increases in half-year sales and profit.

The Irish house-builder and developer said pretax profit nearly doubled to EUR67.3 million in the six months ended June 30 from EUR37.0 million the year prior.

Revenue increased 60% to EUR455.5 million from EUR284.5 million, with average selling price up 1.6% to EUR393,000 from EUR387,000.

Basic earnings per share soared 82% to 9.3 euro cents in the recent half-year from 5.1 cents a year before, and in response Cairn Homes hiked its interim dividend by 10% to 4.5 cents from 4.1 cents.

In addition, Cairn announced a new EUR50 million share buyback programme, which will start immediately on Wednesday and run for up to a year.

Cairn Homes said the buyback reflects the "sales visibility provided by our record order book and the capacity of the group's balance sheet to invest in growth and return excess cash concurrently."

The closed and forward order book totalled EUR1.89 billion as at September 1, up 23% from EUR1.54 billion a year ago.

This underpins full-year guidance and provides "clear visibility" on further growth into 2027, Cairn Homes said.

As a result, Cairn Homes raised return on equity guidance and forecast top-end sales and operating profit for the financial year.

It now expects full-year revenue of EUR1.08 billion compared to between EUR1.05 billion to EUR1.08 billion before, operating profit of EUR185 million, compared to EUR180 million to EUR185 million before and return on equity of 17.0%, up from 16.5% before.

In 2025, Cairn Homes reported revenue of EUR944.6 million, operating profit of EUR168.6 million and return on equity of 16.6%.

Shares in Cairn Homes rose 4.6% to 234.38 pence each in London on Wednesday.

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