Housebuilder Galliford Try doubled its interim dividend as its pretax profit soared in the first half of the year, adding to signs of stabilisation in the housing market in the face of severe economic uncertainties.
Galliford also announced that its finance director Frank Nelson will be retiring at the end of September and that it was searching for a replacement.
First-half profit before tax rose 89% to £32.2 million.
The company reported house sales - reserved, contracted or completed - of £605 million in the first half, and housebuilding margins rose to 11 percent.
The company, which was founded by W S Try in 1908 as a construction business carrying out work in west London, said the housing market, particularly in the south of the country, was performing well, ahead of the key spring selling season.
Though British house prices continued to fall in the three months to January, prices in London rose overall and surveyors became much less downbeat about prices for the coming months, a survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors showed.
Galliford said its order book stood at £1.6 billion at the end of the first-half.
The company doubled its interim dividend to 9p a share.
Shares of the company closed at 501p last night on the London Stock Exchange.
