Legal & General : Housing Growth Boosted by Record CALA Homes Peformance

16 February 2017

CALA Group, one of the UK's largest house builders is on track to deliver record revenues, profits, and new homes during 2017. Within the Legal & General Capital division, CALA creates strong profit growth and contributes to the expanding housing interests of the Group, now delivering across all of the UK's key housing sectors. Housing is part of Legal & General's wider investments in key UK infrastructure. Legal & General as a Group has invested over £8 billion in infrastructure, and plans to invest a total of £15 billion, delivering jobs and economic growth in the UK.

Paul Stanworth, Managing Director of Legal & General Capital, said: 'CALA's strong performance is a continued success story for Legal & General Capital, providing strong returns for shareholders whilst delivering much-needed and high quality new homes. As the recent Government White Paper highlighted, housing in the UK has for too long been starved of investment, innovation and long-term thinking. We are addressing this by objectively looking at housing across all tenures and how new homes are delivered, putting to work our innovative long-term capital to help boost supply.'

Legal & General Capital acquired around 50% of the equity in CALA during 2013 for £75 million. Over the last the 3 years, CALA's homes delivered, revenues and profits have grown by circa 35%, 140% and 370% respectively. CALA has delivered a very strong 6 months of trading to 31 December 2016, and is on course to deliver a record year for homes built, revenues and profits for full year 2017. In the first half of CALA's financial year to 31 December 2016, the company secured planning consent on 15 sites, which will deliver 1533 new homes with a gross development value of £648 million. CALA has also reported a positive trading performance in the first weeks of 2017.

CALA's strong performance is a boost to Legal & General Capital's already significant housing platform which is set to become a top five provider of homes in the next five years fully responding to the UK's housing shortage. The platform includes:

• The £900 million plus joint venture investment in build-to-rent homes with a pipeline of 1450 homes across the UK with significant further opportunities.
• Delivering on its 3500 acre strategic land bank, with its first new housing community on 250 acres set to deliver 1000 new homes, a primary school, care home, community facility and a 140 acre nature reserve in Crowthorne, Berkshire.
• The innovative modular housing factory in Leeds has plans to deliver 7000 precision-built, energy-efficient units, which will equate to 3500 affordable homes per year. These initiatives are investing in new real assets, delivering economic growth and new jobs.

These are part of Legal & General's wider franchise in UK housing with investments including build to sell, build to rent, precision built modular homes, student, affordable and senior living housing.

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Legal & General Capital

Legal & General Capital (LGC) focuses on direct investments in key sectors, particularly housing, infrastructure and SME finance. These reflect our aim to invest for the long term in economically and socially useful assets, to secure competitive returns and to create new asset classes for Legal & General's varied investment requirements, for our partners and for the wider marketplace. We work closely alongside other businesses within Legal & General to ensure the broadest range of skillsets are deployed on any project and to utilise principal investment and asset management synergies across the Group. Investments to date have included housebuilder CALA Homes, a Build to Rent joint venture, urban regeneration projects at MediaCity/Salford and Bracknell, SME finance group Pemberton and clean energy firm, NTR