The international home repairs and improvements business, Homeserve delivered results for FY2022 earlier today which were in line with the group’s expectations.
HomeServe made significant strategic and financial progress in FY22, achieving an acceleration in performance over FY21, which was in line with expectations.
Customer satisfaction was high, and global policy retention increased by 1% to 84% in 2022, demonstrating the Membership business’s usual robustness and value to homes in times of economic volatility.
HomeServe’s three business divisions saw strategic progress with innovative new products gaining traction in North America, progress in building three complementary businesses in EMEA – Membership, HVAC and Claims Assitance; and progress in Home Experts on creating businesses to match homeowners with deals of quality.
North American Membership and HVAC
North American Membership and HVAC segment performed strongly.
Despite the ongoing effects of the Omicron on HomeServe and its partners, policy retention was 86% remaining the same as in 2021, and affinity partner households increased to £73M from £66m in 2021.
To promote future growth, the company is expanding its customer offerings to let households engage in the green home revolution and align with partners’ to achieve carbon reduction goals.
HVAC As A Service provides worry-free heating and air conditioning replacements with a yearly servicing and breakdown cover for a monthly subscription. After a successful trial with a large utility in New York State, the service is now available.
Through a new 4.6m household utility relationship and expansion with an existing partner, HomeServe’s installation and maintenance proposition for domestic electric vehicle charging is now available to 9m households.
In addition, HomeServe’s water loss cover product, which is supplied on a bill by municipal water utilities to protect their customers from unexpectedly large expenditures due to home water leaks, has seen strong growth.
EMEA Membership and HVAC
The division continued to execute on its transformation and growth targets across EMEA Membership and HVAC.
Customer numbers ended the year in line with the group’s forecasts, and policy retention was higher than in 2021 in the UK, indicating that the company’s transformation plan is on track.
France and Spain did well, with the Spanish claims handling company seeing a significant increase in job volumes.
In the second half, HomeServe’s Japanese joint venture inked two more marketing agreements.
Home Experts
As planned, the Home Experts segment turned a profit for the first time in a full year, owing mostly to Checkatrade’s sustained growth as the UK’s top online platform for connecting homeowners with quality trades.
Checkatrade had 47,000 paying trades at the end of the year compared to 44,000 in 2021, and the average revenue per trade is likely to surpass the Milestone 1 objective of £1,200 compared to £939.
As trade supply and consumer demand began to rebalance in the second half, the number of trades on the platform increased.
With robust cash generation in HomeServe’s busier second half largely offset by the CET acquisition in the UK and subsequent attractive HVAC M&A across all of HomeServe’s Membership & HVAC companies, net debt on 31 March 2022 was 2x EBITDA.
HomeServe shares gained 2.25% to 884p following the announcement of results performing in line with group expectations.