Trading Update

Karbon Homes Group

9 December 2025

Karbon Homes Group trading update for the six-month period ending 30 September 2025.

Karbon Homes Group (KHG) is today issuing its consolidated trading update for the period ended 30 September 2025.

These figures are unaudited and for information purposes only. 

Highlights for the period ending 30 September 2025:

·    KHG own and manage 34,144 homes (2024: 33,645)

·    Turnover for the period was £111.1m (2024: £108.0m)

·    Operating surplus (including asset sales) for the period was £28.2m (2024: £27.2m)

·    Overall operating margin (including asset sales) was 24.5% (2024: 26.4%)

·    Overall operating margin (excluding asset sales) was 23.4% (2024: 25.4%)

·    The surplus before tax for the period was £15.3m (2024: £16.9m)

·    Gearing as at 30 September 2025 was 37.6% (2024: 35.0%)

·    Interest cover for the period was 162.6% (2024: 199.0%)

Commenting on the results, Scott Martin, Executive Director of Resources, said:

We are pleased to publish our half year results up to September 2025.

Against a financially challenging backdrop, and increasing regulatory and legislative change, we've seen positive performance across the Group during the first six months of the year.

Providing good quality homes

Boosted by our Strategic Partnership with Homes England, we've continued to bring much-needed affordable homes to communities across the North East and Yorkshire.

Since April we have added 205 new build homes to the Group and have now completed 918 of the 2,324 strategic partnership funded homes we're delivering by 2028.  We have made a start on site for over 1,800 (78%) of the homes in the programme   

Highlights of the first half of the year include the positive progress at our Seaham Garden Village development where more than 200 of the 750 affordable homes we're delivering are now under construction.

Through our Strategic Partnership, we're also supporting peers in the region to unlock funding for developments.

These homes will count towards our 2,324 Strategic Partnership total, both strengthening our working relationships with peers in the region and reducing capital spend in the Karbon Group.

We've also remained committed to investing in the quality and safety of our existing homes.

We've invested £19.6m in this first half of the year through our planned maintenance programme, to upgrade and modernise our stock.

Deliver an excellent customer experience

Ending the first half of the year, our customer satisfaction net promoter score was +40.4, 3.7 points higher than this time last year.

Our tenant satisfaction measures for the same period show a 3.3% increase in overall customer satisfaction, now sitting at 83.2%. The largest increase came from our complaints handling, which has increased by 12.8% from the same point last year.

We're working to improve our digital processes, systems and ways of working to ensure consistent service delivery for customers and, where possible, to achieve efficiency gains.

Awaab's Law came into effect in October, and in preparation our new dedicated Damp and Mould team have been putting the necessary systems in place to ensure we're responding to reports within the outlined timescales. We've also introduced a Major Works Team to respond to complex and structural repairs and ensure these are resolved thoroughly and efficiently.

However, repairs costs remain a significant challenge. Since April we have seen sustained demand for responsive repairs, and we will be closely assessing the impact of Awaab's Law on operating resources.

Shape strong, sustainable places for our communities

We've continued to focus on delivering place-shaping activities across our two impact areas, Byker and Stanley.

In partnership with key stakeholders, we launched a series of a series of bi-monthly street food markets in Stanley, bringing the community together whilst boosting footfall for businesses on the high street.

And in Byker, we're focused on bringing the estate's underutilised hobby rooms back into use to create new community spaces and encourage social connection.

After a measurement framework refresh last year, we have a renewed focus on ensuring all our social value activity has a clear objective of bringing sustainable, benefits to communities and customers' lives.

So far this year we've worked with 18 contractors and suppliers to deliver over £1.6m in social value projects, and we won 'Best Social Value Project' at the Housing Executive Awards.

Enablers of success

We have undergone our routine regulatory inspection and for the first time were assessed on the consumer standard. We were awarded a G1/V1/C2 rating, the highest possible ratings for viability and governance. However, the inspection highlighted areas for improvement. While our repairs service continues to receive high customer satisfaction overall, we know that non-urgent repairs are taking too long, and we've brought in more trade colleagues and sub-contractors to help reduce wait times.

Our financial position remains strong, and we started the year by increasing our loan book, agreeing £189m of new facilities to support our investment plans for delivering new and upgrading existing homes.

S&P Global confirmed our credit rating at 'A', with the outlook modified to stable. 

To consolidate our market rent activity, in July we simplified our Group arrangements by transferring ownership of a portfolio of 270 market rent properties from our subsidiary into Karbon Homes Limited.

And we've continued work to set up a new subsidiary within the Karbon Group, Graphite Living, which we are in the process of registering as a for-profit RP. In May we appointed the board for Graphite Living, who are supporting us through the registration process with the Regulator of Social Housing.

We'll be holding our annual investor update in January 2025, which will provide insight into our full year FY25 results and discuss future challenges and opportunities moving into 2026/27.

The webinar on the 20 January 2026 will be hosted by our Group Chief Executive, Paul Fiddaman, with the opportunity for one-to-one meetings that day.

To register an interest in this event or in a one-to-one meeting with us, please get in touch with James Clifford (Group Director, Strategic Finance),

james.clifford@karbonhomes.co.uk