Berkeley Group (BKG.L) - Company Research

Last Updated: 16 September 2026

The Berkeley Group Holdings plc is a FTSE 100 residential developer focused almost entirely on London, Birmingham and the South-East of England. It is the most financially conservative of the large UK housebuilders — it carries net cash rather than net debt, buys land on long cycles and builds large, complex, multi-year brownfield regeneration schemes rather than volume estates. The year to 30 April 2026 was a step down: revenue fell 4.2% to £2,383.3m, pre-tax profit fell 14.7% to £451.4m and forward sales dropped to £1,006m from £1,403m. Management responded by rephasing its Berkeley 2035 plan on 1 April 2026 — halting outright land buying, cutting planned production by around 25% over four years, and prioritising cash generation and buybacks over volume. This report sets out what the filings actually say. It contains no analyst ratings and no price targets.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	BKG — London Stock Exchange (FTSE 100)
Headquarters	Cobham, Surrey, United Kingdom
Founded	1976
Fiscal year end	30 April
CEO / Leadership	Richard Stearn, Chief Executive (appointed 5 September 2025); Rob Perrins, Executive Chair; Neil Eady, Chief Financial Officer
Employees	2,487 (average monthly number employed by the Group in FY2026; FY2025: 2,532)
Revenue (FY2026, year to 30 April 2026)	£2,383.3m, down 4.2% year on year
Profit before tax (FY2026)	£451.4m, down 14.7% year on year
Profit after tax (FY2026)	£318.3m
Basic earnings per share (FY2026)	331.6p (FY2025: 371.8p)
Net cash at 30 April 2026	£363.3m (gross cash £1,023.3m less borrowings £660.0m)
Net asset value per share	3,917p at 30 April 2026 (FY2025: 3,595p)
Homes completed (FY2026)	4,076 owned plus 127 in joint ventures; average selling price £546,000
Land holdings	52,763 plots across 59 developments, with a future gross margin of £6,442m, plus a pipeline of about 11,000 plots
Market capitalisation	Approximately £2.96bn at a share price of 3,252p, 16 September 2026

Figures are from Berkeley's results announcement for the year ended 30 April 2026 (published 24 June 2026) and its Annual Report 2026 (published 11 August 2026). Live pricing for BKG and the rest of the FTSE 100 is on the ChartsView Live Charts page.

2. Bull Case and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Net cash in a capital-intensive industry: Berkeley ended FY2026 with £363.3m of net cash, £1.02bn of gross cash on hand throughout the year, and post-year-end extended its bank facility to £1.0bn running to 2031. Very few developers can fund eight-year London build programmes without leverage.
• The land is already bought: 52,763 owned plots plus an 11,000-plot pipeline carry £6,442m of future gross margin. Management has stopped buying new land outright, so future output is delivered from a bank acquired at pre-2022 prices rather than at today's cost.
• Shares stand below stated book value: net asset value per share was 3,917p at 30 April 2026 against a 3,252p share price on 16 September 2026, a price-to-book of roughly 0.83x. That is the explicit reason management gives for returning capital through buybacks rather than dividends.
• A contracted, multi-year return programme: Berkeley has committed to £2.0bn of shareholder returns over ten years from December 2024, with £640m due by September 2030. £171m of that tranche had been completed by the 11 September 2026 AGM — ahead of the required run-rate.
• London supply is structurally short: Berkeley reports London new-build starts running at roughly 10% of the MHCLG annual target, and states that taking an apartment building in London from consent to completion now takes about eight years against five a decade ago. Barriers to entry are rising for everyone, which favours the incumbent with the consented land.

Bear Case

• Earnings are contracting, not compounding: FY2026 revenue fell 4.2%, gross margin fell from 26.6% to 25.1%, operating margin fell from 20.1% to 18.7%, pre-tax profit fell 14.7% and basic EPS fell 10.8%. Return on capital employed dropped from 16.5% to 13.8%.
• The order book has thinned: cash due on forward sales fell to £1,006m from £1,403m a year earlier, and management said at the 11 September 2026 AGM that the value of reservations was running roughly 15% lower year on year with buyers cautious ahead of the autumn Budget.
• Management is shrinking the business on purpose: the AGM update confirmed production will be re-phased down by around 25% over four years. Guidance is now a cumulative £1.4bn of pre-tax profit across FY2027–FY2030 — an average of £350m a year against £451.4m delivered in FY2026.
• Tax and regulation are compounding against the model: the 4% Residential Property Developer Tax on top of 25% corporation tax produced a 29.5% effective tax rate in FY2026, and the Building Safety Levy is still to come. Berkeley's own results statement describes the additional taxation as counter-productive.
• Unresolved legacy and litigation exposure: £226.3m of provisions sit on the balance sheet for post-completion obligations including fire safety, with 39 buildings still having works outstanding. Separately, Berkeley is one of seven housebuilders named in a £4.5bn opt-out class action before the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

3. Revenue Segments

Segment / category	% of revenue	What it is
Residential	95.1% (£2,265.2m)	Sales of private and affordable homes on Berkeley's own developments, predominantly London, Birmingham and the South-East. 4,076 homes completed in FY2026 at an average selling price of £546,000.
Commercial	4.6% (£110.4m)	Offices, retail, workspace and community floorspace built as part of mixed-use regeneration schemes and either sold or let. Up sharply from £14.8m in FY2025 on the timing of individual commercial disposals.
Land sales	0.3% (£7.7m)	Disposals of land and part-developed sites to third parties. Lumpy by nature; £39.5m in FY2025.

Berkeley reports as a single operating segment, so the split above is the revenue-category disclosure given in the FY2026 results announcement rather than a segmental profit analysis. Separately, the Berkeley Living build-to-rent platform is carried as investment property at £297.2m at 30 April 2026 (FY2025: £145.7m) and does not yet contribute materially to revenue; its rental income will build from FY2027 onwards.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Berkeley buys complex brownfield land — former gasworks, industrial yards, town-centre sites — secures planning consent, builds out over five to ten years and sells homes. Profit is made on the spread between the price paid for land years earlier and the value of the finished, consented, built product. Because the cycle is long, the margin recognised in any one year reflects land bought and priced in a very different market. FY2026's 25.1% gross margin is the working-out of land acquired largely before 2022.

Why the balance sheet is the moat. Most developers are forced sellers in a downturn because debt covenants demand cash. Berkeley is not: it held over £1.0bn of gross cash all year against £660m of long-term borrowings, and generated £260.3m of operating cash flow in FY2026. That allows it to hold stock rather than discount it, to keep building through weak demand, and to buy back shares at a discount to book value when the market is pricing pessimism. The £1,006m of cash due on forward sales is an additional, contracted funding line.

Where the durable advantage sits. The scarce asset is not construction capability but consented London land with a deliverable viability case. Berkeley holds 52,763 plots carrying £6,442m of future gross margin, on sites that typically take the better part of a decade to bring through planning. A new entrant cannot replicate that inside a cycle, and the lengthening planning timelines Berkeley complains about also widen the gap behind it.

What is changing. The new element is recurring income. Berkeley Living, the build-to-rent platform, retains completed homes rather than selling them — 1,122 homes completed or in production across six communities, with a target of 4,000 by the end of FY2035 and roughly £400m of investment at cost. That converts part of a cyclical, lumpy trading business into an annuity, at the cost of tying up capital that would otherwise be returned.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from Berkeley's own full-year results announcements and Annual Report. Berkeley does not publish an adjusted or underlying earnings-per-share measure.

Fiscal Year	Revenue (£m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2022 (to 30 Apr 2022)	2,348.0	+6.6%	417.8p	417.8p†	Nil‡	£660.0m
FY2023 (to 30 Apr 2023)	2,550.2	+8.6%	426.8p	426.8p†	91.0p	£660.0m
FY2024 (to 30 Apr 2024)	2,464.3	-3.4%	373.9p	373.9p†	92.0p	£660.0m
FY2025 (to 30 Apr 2025)	2,486.5	+0.9%	371.8p	371.8p†	240.0p	£677.9m
FY2026 (to 30 Apr 2026)	2,383.3	-4.2%	331.6p	331.6p†	Nil§	£660.0m

† Berkeley reports no adjusted or underlying earnings-per-share figure, so the GAAP basic EPS is repeated in the Adjusted EPS column. ‡ No ordinary dividend was paid in FY2022; capital was returned through a £451.5m B-share scheme and £63.7m of buybacks. § No dividend was paid in FY2026; the entire £233.0m of shareholder returns was made through buybacks of 6.3m shares at an average price of £37.10.

Berkeley reports in half-years rather than quarters. The table below shows the most recent period first; the second-half figures are derived by deducting the reported first half from the audited full year.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
H2 FY2026 (Nov 2025 – Apr 2026, derived)	£1,203.8m	147.9p†	147.9p
H1 FY2026 (six months to 31 Oct 2025)	£1,179.5m	183.7p†	183.7p
H2 FY2025 (Nov 2024 – Apr 2025, derived)	£1,207.6m	185.0p†	185.0p
H1 FY2025 (six months to 31 Oct 2024)	£1,278.9m	186.8p†	186.8p
FY2026 total (year to 30 Apr 2026)	£2,383.3m	331.6p†	331.6p

Balance sheet and cash flow, FY2026. Cash and cash equivalents were £1,023.3m against £660.0m of non-current borrowings, leaving net cash of £363.3m. Inventories stood at £4,743.3m, down from £5,052.2m, of which work in progress was £3,848.5m and completed stock £331.7m. Net assets were £3,640.2m. Operating cash flow was £260.3m (FY2025: £193.1m), against £69.2m of additions to investment property and no purchases of property, plant and equipment. Depreciation and amortisation was £3.3m (FY2025: £3.8m) — immaterial, since Berkeley's own property, plant and equipment base is only £11.6m. Financing outflows of £253.2m were dominated by £233.0m of buybacks and a £17.9m repayment of the Homes England facility.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, September 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Market cap	~£2.96bn (share price 3,252p, approximately 91.1m shares in issue after buybacks, 16 September 2026)
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	~9.8x (3,252p ÷ FY2026 basic EPS of 331.6p). Berkeley publishes no adjusted EPS, so there is no separate adjusted-earnings multiple to quote.
P/E (forward)	~11.7x on consensus FY2027 earnings per Yahoo Finance data as at 16 September 2026. Berkeley itself no longer gives single-year profit guidance — it guides £1.4bn of cumulative pre-tax profit across FY2027–FY2030, an average of about £350m a year, which on a 29.5% tax rate and 91.1m shares implies roughly 271p of EPS and a multiple of about 12.0x.
P/S (TTM)	~1.24x (market cap £2.96bn ÷ FY2026 revenue £2,383.3m)
Price/book	~0.83x (share price 3,252p ÷ net asset value per share of 3,917p at 30 April 2026) — a 17% discount to stated book
Enterprise value	~£2.60bn (market cap ~£2.96bn + total debt £660.0m − cash and cash equivalents £1,023.3m, per the balance sheet at 30 April 2026). Berkeley's large net cash position means enterprise value is materially below market cap.
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	~5.8x (EV ~£2,600m ÷ EBITDA £450.1m; EBITDA = FY2026 operating profit £446.8m + depreciation and amortisation £3.3m taken from the cash flow statement. Berkeley discloses a single D&A figure, so no wider segmental measure applies.)
P/FCF	~15.5x (market cap ~£2.96bn ÷ free cash flow £191.1m; FCF = operating cash flow £260.3m − capital expenditure £69.2m, being additions to investment property, per the FY2026 cash flow statement)
Dividend yield	Nil. No ordinary dividend was declared for FY2026; returns are being made through buybacks (£233.0m in FY2026).
52-week high	4,442.0p, reached 12 February 2026
52-week low	2,796.0p, reached 1 April 2026
Short interest (% of float)	4.89% as at 11 September 2026, per the FCA aggregate net short position published via Shortregister. Since July 2026 the FCA publishes only an anonymised aggregate rather than named positions.
Days to cover	~16 days (derived: 4.89% of approximately 91.1m shares ÷ three-month average daily volume of about 272,000 shares). The FCA aggregate regime does not publish an official days-to-cover figure, so this is an estimate rather than a disclosed statistic.

7. What Are They Building

Berkeley 2035, rephased. On 1 April 2026 management reset the long-term plan it had set out in December 2024. New land is no longer being acquired outright — only through joint ventures — on the grounds that the tax and regulatory burden makes fresh acquisition uneconomic against the existing bank. Instead the target is to add £2bn of value to land already owned through optimisation and planning work. The operating margin target is 17.5% to 19.5%, and return on capital is targeted at 15% in the core business, with 11% to 15% in the interim. FY2026 delivered an 18.7% operating margin and 13.8% return on capital, both inside those ranges.

Berkeley Living, the build-to-rent platform. Six communities — Alexandra Gate, Kidbrooke Village, Eden Grove, Horlicks Quarter, Grand Union and Silkstream — account for 1,122 homes completed or in production, with a further 2,878 homes of future build-to-rent production identified. The first residents moved into Foundry Yard at Alexandra Gate in April 2026 and over 120 homes had been let by the year end. The investment property carrying value rose to £297.2m from £145.7m, against roughly £400m of planned investment at cost for the first six communities, completing by FY2028. The stated long-term target is 4,000 build-to-rent homes by the end of FY2035.

The planning pipeline. Berkeley's development story is a planning story. FY2026 brought both wins and losses: the Camden Goods Yard appeal was won after the year end, while Peckham Rye was refused on conservation-area grounds and Beckton and Motspur Park Gasworks were blocked at local authority level before being called in by the Greater London Authority. Land holdings stand at 52,763 plots across 59 developments with £6,442m of future gross margin, plus an 11,000-plot pipeline — down from 12,000 a year earlier, reflecting the pause on land buying.

Funding the programme. After the year end Berkeley extended its bank facility to £1.0bn running to 2031, with an option to 2033, alongside £400m of Green Bonds maturing in August 2031. That, with £1.02bn of gross cash and £1,006m of contracted forward sales, is the war chest behind both the build programme and the buyback.

8. Competitive Landscape

Peer	Market cap (September 2026)	Key 2025 metric
Barratt Redrow (BTRW.L)	~£3.82bn (16 September 2026)	17,667 completions in the year to 28 June 2026, up from 16,565 in FY2025, with FY2026 underlying pre-tax profit guided to around £560m — roughly four times Berkeley's unit volume.
Persimmon (PSN.L)	~£3.53bn (16 September 2026)	FY2025 revenue £3.75bn, up 17%, on 11,905 completions, up 12%, with underlying pre-tax profit of £445.6m; FY2026 guidance around 12,500 completions.
Taylor Wimpey (TW.L)	~£2.64bn (16 September 2026)	H1 2026 pre-tax profit of £116.8m against a £92.7m loss in H1 2025; full-year 2026 UK completions guided to 10,600–10,800, the low end of the prior range.
Bellway (BWY.L)	~£2.19bn (16 September 2026)	FY2026, to 31 July 2026: revenue £3.14bn, up 13%, on 9,695 completions, up 10.8%, with net cash of £157.7m against £41.8m a year earlier.

The comparison is unflattering on volume and flattering on price. Berkeley completed 4,076 homes against Barratt Redrow's 17,667, but at an average selling price of £546,000 against a sector average closer to £300,000, and at an 18.7% operating margin that remains at the top of the listed peer group. Berkeley is also the only one of the five to end its latest year with a net cash position of more than £350m. All five — together with Bloor Homes and Vistry — are named respondents in the £4.5bn Competition Appeal Tribunal class action that followed the CMA's housebuilding information-sharing investigation. Market capitalisations above were taken live on 16 September 2026.

9. Insider Activity

Berkeley's chief executive is Richard Stearn, who moved from chief financial officer to CEO on 5 September 2025, with founder-era chief executive Rob Perrins moving to Executive Chair at the same time and Neil Eady becoming chief financial officer. Directors have been net buyers through 2026, in most cases applying a proportion of their net annual bonus for FY2025/26 to open-market purchases — a long-standing Berkeley practice rather than a one-off signal.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Richard Stearn (Chief Executive Officer)	11 Aug 2026	Buy	1,692	£35.245 average	£59,575.52	Open-market purchase funded from net FY2025/26 annual bonus
Mrs Jane Eady (person closely associated with CFO Neil Eady)	11 Aug 2026	Buy	3,405	£35.15	£119,580.75	Open-market purchase, person closely associated
Rob Perrins (Executive Chair)	30 Apr 2026	Buy	7,000	£31.7919 average	£222,543.02	Open-market purchase
Rachel Downey (Non-Executive Director)	15 Apr 2026	Buy	575	£34.4904	£19,831.98	Open-market purchase

No director or PDMR disposals were disclosed by regulatory announcement during 2026 in the filings reviewed. Separately, the company itself bought back 6.3m shares during FY2026 at an average price of £37.10, above the level at which directors were buying in April and August 2026.

10. Key Risks

• Demand and buyer confidence: forward sales fell to £1,006m from £1,403m and reservations were running around 15% lower year on year at the September 2026 AGM. Management explicitly linked the softness to political uncertainty ahead of the autumn Budget and to Middle East conflict, and warned buyers may delay decisions until after it.
• Taxation and regulation: the 4% Residential Property Developer Tax stacked on 25% corporation tax produced a 29.5% effective rate in FY2026, up from 27.8%. The Building Safety Levy has still to be introduced, and Berkeley's own results statement calls the additional burden counter-productive. Further fiscal measures aimed at housing would land directly on margin.
• Planning and land availability: Berkeley reports that taking a London apartment building from consent to completion now takes about eight years against five a decade ago. FY2026 saw refusals at Peckham Rye and blocks at Beckton and Motspur Park Gasworks. With outright land buying paused, delivery depends entirely on getting the existing bank through the system.
• Building safety and legacy remediation: £226.3m of provisions cover post-completion obligations including fire safety, with 825 relevant buildings identified, assessments complete on 99% of them and 39 still having works outstanding. Cost inflation or a widening of scope would increase the charge.
• Competition litigation: Berkeley is one of seven housebuilders named in a £4.5bn opt-out class action before the Competition Appeal Tribunal on behalf of new-build buyers between October 2015 and June 2026. The CMA itself found no infringement and accepted binding commitments plus a collective £100m affordable-housing payment, but the follow-on claim is unresolved.
• Geographic and product concentration: essentially all revenue comes from London and the South-East, and from large, long-duration, high-price-point apartment schemes. There is no regional or product diversification to offset a London-specific downturn, and the average selling price of £546,000 makes the business more exposed to mortgage rates and to international buyer sentiment than volume housebuilders are.

11. Recent Developments

• 11 Sep 2026 — AGM and trading update strikes a cautious tone. Berkeley reaffirmed the £1.4bn cumulative pre-tax profit target for FY2027 to FY2030 but said trading since May 2026 had been affected by Middle East conflict and UK political uncertainty. Enquiry levels were described as stable with buyers cautious, production is to be re-phased down by around 25% over four years in favour of cash generation, FY2027 earnings will be weighted to the first half, and £171m of the £640m buyback tranche had been completed. The shares fell around 1% on the day.
• 11 Aug 2026 — Annual Report 2026 published and directors buy. Alongside publication of the annual report, chief executive Richard Stearn bought 1,692 shares at an average £35.245 and Mrs Jane Eady, closely associated with the chief financial officer, bought 3,405 shares at £35.15, both funded from net FY2025/26 bonuses.
• 24 Jun 2026 — FY2026 results show a step down. Revenue of £2,383.3m was 4.2% lower, pre-tax profit of £451.4m was 14.7% lower, and basic EPS fell to 331.6p. Net cash rose to £363.3m and net asset value per share rose 9.0% to 3,917p. No ordinary dividend was declared; £233.0m was returned through buybacks.
• 30 Apr 2026 — Executive Chair adds to his holding. Rob Perrins bought 7,000 shares at an average £31.79, a total of £222,543, within weeks of the 1 April share-price low of 2,796p.
• 01 Apr 2026 — Berkeley 2035 rephased. Management stopped acquiring new land outright other than through joint ventures, shifted the emphasis to adding £2bn of value to existing land holdings, and restated the shareholder-return schedule of £640m by September 2030 and £1,100m by September 2034.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 09 Dec 2026 — half-year results for the six months to 31 October 2026, per Berkeley's published financial diary. The first hard read on whether the softer reservations reported at the September AGM have fed through to completions and margin.
• 30 Apr 2027 — financial year end for FY2027, the first of the four years covered by the £1.4bn cumulative pre-tax profit target.
• Expected Jun 2027 — FY2027 full-year results announcement. Berkeley has reported its full year in late June in each of the last several years; a date has not yet been published.
• Expected Sep 2030 — deadline for the £640m tranche of the shareholder-return programme, of which £171m had been completed by September 2026.
• Expected Sep 2034 — deadline for the full £1,100m cumulative tranche, completing the £2.0bn ten-year return commitment.
• TBC — Competition Appeal Tribunal timetable for the £4.5bn opt-out class action naming Berkeley and six other housebuilders. No hearing date has been published.
• TBC — introduction date and rate for the Building Safety Levy, which Berkeley's FY2026 results statement flags as still to come.

No ordinary dividend was declared for FY2026, so there is no forthcoming ex-dividend date under the current buyback-first capital allocation policy. Scheduled macro events that bear on UK housing demand — Bank of England rate decisions, inflation prints and the autumn Budget — are tracked on the ChartsView Economic Calendar, and members discuss UK housebuilders in the ChartsView Forum.

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