Crosby Group: housebuilding produces 23% profit margin

Crosby Group, the private housebuilder, has unveiled a latest pre-tax profit of £30m which represents a healthy profit margin of 22.6%.

The previous year’s margin ran to 19.2%.

The latest figures cover the 12 months to 30 June 2007. 

Crosby, now owned by Lend Lease, was sold off for £315m by Berkeley four years ago when Tony Pidgley, managing director, decided he wanted to opt out of conventional housebuilding in order to switch Berkeley’s focus to urban regeneration.

Crosby’s directors were so comfortable about their business’s future that they removed £32 by way of a dividend last year. That sum might be huge but it is still well short of the £50m dividend paid out by Crosby two years ago.

The latest turnover of £130m was well down on the 2006 figure of £170m which itself represented a step back from Crosby’s £220m turnover in the year before that.

Crosby is run by no more than 78 employees, down from the 87 number in 2006.

The highest-paid director enjoyed a pay of £795,000 with another £40,000 on top of this to help towards his pension.