‘There’s been a lot of noise about the business.’ Vistry’s new chief executive on what’s next for the housebuilder

As baptisms of fire go, Adam Daniels’ first few months in charge of Vistry, to the outsider at least, have been right up there, culminating with an announcement last month of a half year loss of £661m.

Given he and his wife – both are on their second marriages – have four children between them, he might disagree over which is harder: running a FTSE 250 firm or parenting four boys. “8, 9, 11 and 12. Half the week is spent recovering,” Daniels says.

The appointment of Daniels as the housebuilder’s new chief executive – replacing the pugnacious Greg Fitzgerald – drew significant attention given he was a relative unknown, unlike the veteran Fitzgerald, and because of his youth.

He turns 36 at the end of March next year, around the time Vistry will be releasing its keenly watched 2026 results.

Daniels is not interested in talking about his age. It is pointed out that he must be Vistry’s youngest ever chief executive and one of the youngest FTSE 250 bosses. “I suppose I am,” is his neutral response.

Daniels’ rise to the top

A Nottingham native, he started out in the industry as a quantity surveyor working for Bloor Homes while completing his cost management degree at Nottingham Trent University.

He spent five years at Bloor, which was set up in 1969 by former plasterer John Bloor – who has an estimated fortune of £3.1bn making him, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, construction’s richest man.

He left Bloor in 2014 to join Galliford Try’s partnerships business – at the time the group’s CEO was Fitzgerald – before joining Countryside Partnerships in 2016, which was bought by Vistry four years ago.

Meanwhile, Fitzgerald stepped away from Galliford Try at the end of 2016 but four months into his retirement he was offered the CEO’s post at Bovis Homes, which was in financial trouble in part because of poor customer relations. Fitzgerald then led the takeover of Galliford Try’s housing business Linden Homes – completed just before lockdown – with the renamed company called Vistry.

Becoming a CEO at a FTSE 250 business is not easy, they don’t just give it to you

Before his promotion to the top spot at Vistry – the name is an amalgamation of Bovis and Galliford Try and was picked by a member of staff after the company held an internal competition to choose a new brand name – Daniels was chair of Vistry’s business in Yorkshire, the North Midlands & West, overseeing 10 regions and more than 1,000 employees.

“Becoming a CEO at a FTSE 250 business is not easy, they don’t just give it to you,” he says. “I’d been on a succession plan at this business for a number of years. I’d done a lot of prep work to be ready for the role.”

What the interim results revealed

Vistry announced his appointment on 13 April and last month Daniels presided over his first set of results, the firm’s interim results which showed it slump to that £661m pre-tax loss.

Much of the red ink was because of accounting matters (the loss included a £475m accounting write-down of value attributed to acquired businesses, plus a £73m building safety provision) but even after stripping these out, the firm made a loss of £83m down from an £80m profit last time. However they are sliced, the numbers helped underline the scale of the rebuilding job Daniels has ahead of him.

The £4bn turnover business, which outbuilt the country’s biggest housebuilder Barratt in 2024, has issued a string of profit warnings and seen its value fall by more than 80% in the past two years, amid a rise in short-sellers (where sellers make money by borrowing shares, selling them, waiting for them to fall in value and buying them back at a lower price - meaning they bet against a company doing well). All this coincided with the departure of Fitzgerald, whose role as both CEO and chairman had previously sparked concerns about Vistry’s governance protocols.

Daniels says Fitzgerald is no longer involved with the firm but is a phone call away if he needs advice.

The restructuring plan

The interim results were as much about the medicine Vistry was going to have to take as they were about the numbers, with Daniels unveiling a string of plans that include trimming the number of homes it builds from around 15,000-16,000 to 12,000 – under Fitzgerald it had at one stage targeted an annual figure of 25,000. Daniels also outlined a plan to cut the number of offices by half, reduce its landbank by a third and pull out of private housing completely in the South-east of England.

“In the South-east the upfront cost of land is very expensive and the cost of infrastructure is expensive,” he says by way of explanation. “There’s lots of upfront cost before you start seeing a return.”

But to many, the standout from the interim results was the size of the debt with average daily net debt rising to about £800m.

Daniels says the figure will remain similar in the second half but adds debt levels this year have already passed their peak, which itself was higher than last year.

He will not say what the peak was but adds the plan is to bring this down to £500m next year, reduce it by another £100m in 2028 before it levels off to a long-term target of £300m from 2029 “holding it at that figure into the future”.

He adds: “The debt and the leverage became bigger than people hoped. There was a view last year in the leadership that the market would be better. We had affordable housing funding on the way but that didn’t come till later than anticipated. [Private housing in] January and February [this year] sold well [but] the Middle East [conflict in Iran] came along and that got a bit more difficult.”

He admits “the market didn’t come back to us” in the way it had expected after that spike in the first two months. “We had very slow sales in the summer, recovered a bit in September, as it always tends to do, and it’s been very steady since then. It’s the lower end of acceptable, it’s not disastrous, but it’s pretty hard going.”

The debt and the leverage became bigger than people hoped

While Daniels has set out his big picture plan to the City and investors, for many of Vistry’s staff the most pressing issue is around job security.

The firm has begun a 45-day consultation with staff, who number around 4,000, with Daniels saying this should end by the middle of November. It has already seen around 230 people leave under its voluntary exit scheme but Daniels will not be drawn on how many could go under any redundancy plans.

It is too early to say, he says, but adds that the cuts will be gradual rather than a one-off big number. “It won’t be instantaneous,” he says. “It will be a gradual change over a two-to-three-year period.”

He does say, though, the firm is offering voluntary redundancy during the consultation period “if they [staff] wish to take it at this stage, now they know the plan, the shape and the structure” of the business.

Among the more high-profile names set to leave is partnerships boss Stephen Teagle, who earlier this month announced he was retiring next March although he will stay on as a part-time adviser.

Daniels says the closure of offices is more about creating efficiencies than simply reducing headcount. “We want to get people closer to the sites, working closely with the site teams. It’s about keeping an eye on projects in an effective way.”

Daniels has also said his plan will see the firm cut its owned landbank from 52,000 plots to 36,000.

He knows that selling off land is easier said than done – especially in today’s stagnant market – but he has been encouraged by a sales exercise held over the summer that led to 15 plots being put up for sale, attracting 82 bids. “They were high quality,” he adds. “Land in the right locations is popular and still attracts a good level of interest.”

In its interim results, the firm said: “The pace of change meant that the operating model, controls and culture did not scale consistently with the group’s volumes.”

One of the criticisms that has been levelled at Vistry is that it grew too quickly, encouraged by its investors. So, what do they make of it all?

“They think the business is undervalued,” Daniels says. “I meet the investors regularly. They think the plan is very clear, understandable and credible. They want to see us deliver that plan now.”

Housing policy: what Daniels wants from government

He says the housing market is still stuck in the mud despite the Labour government putting housebuilding front and centre of its plans.

Affordable housing partners are getting ready to invest the money they’ve been allocated through the £39bn Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP) but private sales, he says, are “still pretty flat”.

“Consumer confidence is holding back sales,” he adds. “Buyers are more considerate of macro-economic conditions.”

He applauds the government for wanting to build 300,000 homes a year. “They should be aiming for [that]. At the start of their tenure, they did some very good things around planning to try and free up land.”

And he says the SAHP is welcome, with the first tranche of funding now allocated. Vistry has been handed £350m under the programme.

The Your First Home initiative is another boon, he adds. “Getting that first step on the ladder is difficult. Something to help people do that is necessary,” he says. Under the proposal, first-time buyers will be given financial help to buy a new home. But like everyone else he wants to see more details in the Budget and says it would be a good idea to get a “sensible set of guardrails in to make sure it’s focussed on the right people”.

The predecessor scheme, Help to Buy, was criticised for being riddled with loopholes and abused, with watchdogs like the National Audit Office saying it was widely available to higher-income brackets or those who could have bought a home anyway.

But while he says the government’s ambitions are a good thing, like many in the industry he is frustrated with the ever-increasing costs of building a home, particularly the level of new rules and regulations housebuilders must now contend with.

Earlier this year, the Home Builders Federation published research which said the cost of building a new home has risen £76,000 since 2020.

The body, which represents the housebuilding industry, said the additional cost is impacting the viability of new housing development, making it uneconomic for companies to build new homes.

Daniels concurs. “The overall cost of new housing has increased substantially. There is a long list of changing regulations over the last five years which add up to a substantial amount of money.”

Nutrient neutrality rules, a legal requirement that new houses do not pollute nearby wetlands, rivers and nature reserves, are widely considered to have put the brakes on building.

There are worries that the Future Homes Standard, which comes into force next March and is a set of requirements on new homes including low-carbon heating, mandatory solar panels, enhanced insulation and airtightness, will do the same.

The latest is this month’s Building Safety Levy – a tax which applies to most newbuild residential schemes and has been introduced to ensure the industry contributes towards the cost of fixing unsafe buildings.

Over the summer there was a lot of noise about the business. People wanted reassurance but I wouldn’t say it was an intense amount of reassurance

Daniels is at pains to point out that he gets why housebuilders have responsibilities, post Grenfell. “We want to make sure all our customers are living in safe buildings, we accept that it’s necessary.” But he adds: “When you layer [the new regulations] on top of each other, it becomes a very substantial amount of money. It’s not the individual ideas that are wrong, it’s the combination of them all that has put viability under pressure. If you make it too punitive to build, you won’t achieve the right volumes to solve the housing crisis.”

What clients and investors think

Since he arrived at the top post, the response, he says, from clients has been positive. “Over the summer there was a lot of noise about the business. People wanted reassurance but I wouldn’t say it was an intense amount of reassurance. They just wanted a quick phone call, an update.

“Our partners want a strong Vistry to work with, one that’s reliable, delivers well and gives them high-quality homes on time in the right way. That’s how I’ve set the business up to deliver.” He says clients aren’t too worried about how much money the firm makes. “They’re more focused around the indebtedness of the business.”

He says the worries that the firm was heading for even more troubled waters have been overplayed. “That was never a risk [of going bust],” he says. “We have a large asset base that’s very valuable. There are lots of options if you want to bring cash into the business.”

Concerns about Vistry’s financial health had been raised a few years ago when it began renegotiating contracts with its subcontractors and materials suppliers. Some saw that as a warning that bigger things were afoot.

That was in spring 2023 and that autumn Vistry said it “appreciate[d] the productive discussions” it had had with supply chain partners over its proposals for 10% pay cuts on all existing and future contracts.

The supply chain was less appreciative and Fitzgerald admitted many were initially furious but said this anger abated once suppliers understood the nature of the long-term partnership Vistry was offering them.

Daniels says the move came as part of a switch from less private sales to more partnerships work. It was about moving from slow builds in private housing to quicker turnarounds on partnerships schemes. “There was guaranteed work for a supplier.”

He is keen to stress how important the supply chain is and does not want to reopen old wounds. “I understand how valuable the supply chain is to us as a business. We want a very good supply chain who we have a great relationship with.”

And he adds that Vistry’s standing with clients remains on a good footing too. “A lot of people enjoy their relationship with Vistry. We’re key to them delivering on their plans for the next few years. The reaction of our partners has been very sensible and supportive.”

If you make it too punitive to build, you won’t achieve the right volumes to solve the housing crisis

It carries out a partner survey every six months and he says that in the last one, 99% of those polled said they wanted to work with the firm again. “It’s a very reassuring figure that shows that we are good at what we do and people want to work with us.”

He finishes with a final piece of advice for politicians. “The industry is under a lot of pressure and it’s not easy operating a developer at the moment, either a big one or a small one. Whatever can be done to support those developers, who are massive employers, who contribute a huge amount to local economies, has to be a good thing.” Over to you, chancellor.