Cairn Homes plc (CRN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Cairn Homes 2025 Preliminary Results Analyst and Investor Call, which will be hosted by Michael Stanley, Chief Executive Officer; and Richard Ball, Chief Financial Officer. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to your first speaker today, Michael Stanley, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sandra. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us for our 2025 results and outlook. I'm joined here in Cairn today by Richard Ball, our CFO, and Ailbhe Molloy, our Head of Investor Relations for this morning's presentation. We're very pleased to be reporting on a strong set of results for '25. The business is now in its second decade, and I believe we've established ourselves not only as a leading Irish homebuilder, but a leading Irish company. As we enter our second decade, we will retain our ambitious approach. And you will see from today's presentation that we intend to increase our annual unit output by 35% over the next 2 years without making any compromise to the quality of the homes we build and the reputation we have earned. I'll start with our 2025 highlights on Slide 4. We've had a strong year and delivered revenue of just shy of EUR 945 million from 2,365 new homes sold in that period. We witnessed exceptional demand for the homes we are building in great locations, and our multiyear order book has grown to EUR 1.32 billion, with a significant portion of that growth coming from first-time buyer sales. We launched 11 new private schemes in 2025 and achieved a very strong average weekly sales rate of 4.2 new homes. We've increased our gross margin slightly to 22.1%. And more importantly, our efficient operating model is delivering an improved operating margin of 17.8%. Moving now to Slide 5. Our scaled operating platform is now active across 25 developments in Dublin, in the surrounding counties around Dublin, in Cork and in Galway. We've grown our headcount by 30% to 600 people working in the company today. And we've had a successful year in planning with over 3,650 new homes granted full planning permission. Our WIP investment in the period has also increased to over EUR 800 million, and we've managed our build cost to circa 1% for the full year. Our performance in recent years has significantly bolstered the strength and size of our balance sheet. With total assets of EUR 1.3 billion, including land and WIP investment of over EUR 1.1 billion, the financial strength that we now have gives us a solid foundation and will support the sizable increase in our housing output that we are outlining to you all today. We are delivering for our shareholders with ROE again increasing in 2025 to 16.6%, and we'll be returning EUR 0.10 per share in dividends, including our proposed final dividend of 5.9% (sic) [ EUR 0.059 ], which we will pay in May. This represents a year-on-year dividend growth of 22%. Slide 6. We are also pleased to be upgrading our full 2026 guidance on revenue, which is now expected to be between EUR 1.05 billion and EUR 1.08 billion, and operating profit increasing to between EUR 180 million and EUR 185 million. Looking beyond 2026, we are firmly positioned to achieve output of circa 6,000 new homes in the next 2 years, including 3,200 new homes in 2027. This is clear evidence that our strategy of delivering large mixed tenure schemes in areas of high demand, strong employment and multimodal transport links is certainly bearing fruit. And I might bring you now to Slide 7 and more detail on our growing order book. We already have just over 2,000 new homes closed and forward sold for 2026. Weather conditions have brought a somewhat challenging start to the year for us, but we're an agile business and remain confident that we can recover lost time to meet our upgraded guidance for this year. Our order book also includes forward sales of 1,374 new homes and over EUR 500 million of revenue for '27 and '28. Might spend a little bit of time on Slide 8. Cairn recognizes that affordability is a very significant challenge for many of our customers. We are continually challenging ourselves to manage cost inflation, and we constantly seek ways to make our homes available to as wide a market as possible. If you look at the slide, in the last 5 years, we have delivered very close to 9,000 new homes. Cairn's average selling price has increased by 4.9% during that period. This is a considerable achievement when one compares this to the broader market for new homes in Ireland with sales increasing -- sales prices increasing by nearly 30% in that same period. Internationally, on the right-hand side, you'll see that European house price growth is 25% in the 5 years to 2024, slightly lower than Ireland, but certainly illustrating that they clearly face similar challenges. You'll also see in the right-hand side of the slide, there are other benchmarks we test ourselves against, including industry indicators that are used to track construction costs. The Tender Price Index has increased by close to 39% in the 5 years to '25 and the Capital Goods Price Index has also increased by 28%. By any of these comparisons, Cairn's scale, our efficient operating platform and our constant drive to prioritize affordability is paying dividends. And now before I hand you over to Richie, I wanted to bring you through -- to Richie to bring you to our financial performance, I wanted to update you on some of the recent evolving trends in housing policy and in particular, how some of these positive policy changes are particularly relevant to Cairn. On Slide 9, I was going to talk about the government's policy on higher densities and better land use. Their Delivering Homes, Building Communities housing plan provides a full suite of measures to encourage more sustainable land use and in support of the significant infrastructure investment plan for Ireland in the near term. This is a necessary departure from the past decades, which had a low-density bias, and the majority of homes in that period being delivered were own-door houses. Many factors have played into this bias, including the higher cost of apartment delivery, lack of realizable demand for apartments, capital constraints affecting homebuilders and difficulties getting higher density schemes through our planning system. New government policies are now designed to address many of these challenges. And thankfully, it is now accepted that own-door housing output is unlikely to breach current levels in the years ahead and increasing apartment output is the only credible way for the government to achieve housing targets. This certainly aligns with Cairn's strength. Approximately 90%, about 88% of currently available residentially zoned land in Ireland is now strictly mandated for medium and high-density delivery, meaning the vast majority of development sites in the coming years will have to include a high proportion of apartments. You'll see from the slide some examples and the density that we are achieving in our projects. These new, more sustainable developments that we are building today include energy-efficient apartments we are delivering on behalf of state-funded partners, also apartments that we're now delivering for private buyers through the new impactful Croi Conaithe scheme and duplex and houses that we sell to private buyers. This approach allows us to create thriving mixed tenure communities that meet density guidelines and results in more sustainable land use. And finally, for the moment on to Slide 10, where we consider the government's current stake in housing in Ireland. Today, the Irish government only owns 10.4% of our total dwelling stock, which, as you can see from the graph, is considerably lower than similarly sized, comparable European countries such as Denmark, Austria and the Netherlands. The tenure we feel that is impacted most by this deficit is affordable combination, which must be boosted to meet the housing needs of our growing working population. Again, Delivering Homes, Building Communities states that the social and affordable pipelines of the affordable housing associations and the land development agency will be primarily for apartments. Based on this clear policy direction, we expect that up to 75% of new dwelling added to the state's ownership by 2030 will in fact be apartments. It is important to emphasize that while the government is playing a larger role, you will see on the right-hand side, they were responsible for only 13.1% of all residential transactions in Ireland in the 5 years to 2024, which includes both new and secondhand homes. Over 65% of all homes are still being delivered for the private market. And the data table shows the output of new home completions from 2020 to 2024. You may be aware that in 2025, the output had increased to 36,000 units. But it shows how much the state is acquiring or building from the overall market completions and transactions. I'm going to now hand you over to Richie, who will bring you through our financial highlights.

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to be presenting a strong set of results for full year 2025 to you this morning. As Michael mentioned earlier, the management team has great confidence and ambitions for the outlook of the business. This confidence is reflected in the upgraded market guidance for 2026 and the introduction of unit guidance for 2027. Moving to Slide 12. You'll see strong growth in our revenue up 10% for the year, delivering a total revenue figure of EUR 944.6 million, a gross profit figure of EUR 208.8 million with a gross margin of 22.1%, up 40 basis points from the prior year. That delivered an operating profit of EUR 168.6 million, which is a 12% increase in the period. And our profit after tax grew 16% to EUR 132.7 million, giving an impressive earnings per share growth of 19%. We've today proposed a final dividend of EUR 0.059 per ordinary share, which is an increase of 22% from last year and represents a payout ratio of 47%. Moving to the next slide, cash flow highlights. When we last spoke to you in September, we called out the significant investment that we made in H1. That has then translated into a cash generation into H2, where we delivered EUR 189.3 million of net cash from operating activities, which has given us a full year net cash from operating activities of EUR 70.6 million after we made a net investment in work in progress for the year of EUR 167.4 million and made shareholder returns of EUR 54.7 million. Following are the key highlights on Slide 14. Total investment in land and WIP stands at EUR 1.12 billion, reflecting significant scale of future delivery capacity. Net debt of EUR 171.3 million remains modest relative to the asset base with debt to GAV of 17.8%. We have EUR 500 million of committed debt facilities with an average maturity of nearly 4 years, which provides substantial financial flexibility. We grew our balance sheet in the period as net assets increased to EUR 836.7 million, an increase of EUR 78.5 million year-on-year. Moving to Slide 15. As you can see, our average selling price and unit mix, we are delivering homes at extremely competitive price points against the broader market. Both houses and apartments for the period sold modest pricing increase at 1% and 2%, respectively, while still generating attractive margins. In 2025, 63% of our delivery was apartments, and we continue to grow our low-density housing to 24% of output. We expect our mix to transition to 50% apartments and 50% duplexes and houses in the medium term, as previously highlighted. Cairn significantly increased investment in the business last year. And as detailed on Slide 16, work in progress investments amounted to EUR 801 million, a 65% increase year-on-year, underpinning a EUR 1.32 billion closed and forward order book, which is up 33% from 2024. This demonstrates strong momentum, confidence in demand and clear visibility on near-term revenues. Moving to Slide 17. Cairn controls a land bank of 18,400 units across 39 sites. The land bank is split between 13 high-density sites with an average plot cost of EUR 43,000 and 26 low-density sites with a lower average plot cost of EUR 33,000. This mix allows Cairn to optimize returns across different market segments and respond to demand and policy trends. The overall average plot cost of EUR 37,000 reflects a disciplined approach to land acquisition and a historic low cost land bank. We also have circa 2,000 unit strategic land bank, which reduces upfront capital requirements and are accretive to returns. In addition, Cairn has a land pipeline of circa 6,000 units across 12 sites, which are a combination of options, partnerships and JVs in exclusive negotiations. These sites provide long-term growth without near-term balance sheet strain. The strategy positions Cairn as a counterparty of choice for off-market and structured land deals, allows us to leverage our platform capability by influencing the design and planning results while enhancing our returns. Moving to Slide 18. We are a long-term, ambitious and sustainable business, which has consistently delivered multiyear growth in volumes, revenue and profit. Our approach to capital allocation supports and underpins this growth strategy. We prioritize a strong and resilient balance sheet as demonstrated by our 16.5% return on equity. We invest significantly in our 2 main raw materials, WIP and land, focus on investments to support and drive our long-term sustainable growth. We are actually implementing our land acquisition strategy, as you've seen on the previous slide, which is underpinned by our disciplined capital deployment approach. We deliver shareholder returns. We make progressive ordinary dividend payments underpinned by a policy, and we distribute surplus capital to shareholders after investing in our business and paying dividends. In total, we've returned over EUR 490 million to shareholders since the start of 2019, including a final proposed dividend of EUR 0.059 announced today. As you've heard from both Michael and myself, we remain very confident about our future outlook as evidenced by the issuing of our upgraded guidance for FY '26 as follows: revenue of circa EUR 1.05 billion to EUR 1.08 billion, and operating profit of circa EUR 180 million to EUR 185 million, a return on equity of circa 16.5%. And the introduction of unit guidance of circa 3,200 for 2027, resulting in a 35% increase over a 2-year period. I will now hand you back over to Michael.

Thank you, Richard. Just a few slides to cover and wrap up our presentation this morning. On Slide 20, very pleased to announce that our sustainability strategy and execution going forward will now be led by the newest member of Cairn's leadership team, Madeleina Loughrey-Grant, who joined as our new CSSO in recent months after a long and very successful career in our industry in the U.K. And no doubt, Madeleina will ensure that sustainability remains a part of our DNA, and I know she has plans to further increase our influence in this really important area. Some highlights and recent highlights are included in the slide, including our A CDP score, the reduction in our gender pay gap. We're proud that over 270 apprentices are now registered on the Cairn Apprenticeship Academy program. We've been recognized as a leader in European homebuilding in promoting and building to Passive House standard. We are also recognized recently as one of Ireland's Top 5 Best Large Workplaces. On Slide 21, I want to look back on the decade of growth in Cairn. As you can see from the graphs, Cairn has experienced phenomenal annual compound growth across numerous KPIs since our first full trading year in 2016, including our revenue, which grew by a compound rate close to 42%, and our housing output by a similar level. We've also grown our earnings per share at an annual growth rate of 56% and our ROE at a rate of 48%, having breached our 15% target in 2024. I want to acknowledge and thank the entire Cairn team, both past and present, for this success. And to conclude now on Slide 22, we are very confident about the outlook for our business, notwithstanding current geopolitical uncertainty. This confidence is based on a number of factors. Fundamental to this is a decade that I've just illustrated and the industry-leading platform that we have today as a result. There is significant momentum in our business. Our reinvestment policy is delivering at pace. We have good visibility through our growing order book. There is a strong and sustained policy backdrop to housing delivery in Ireland, and there is exceptional demand for our new homes. That concludes myself and Ritchie's presentation today. And I'll hand you back to Sandra now to start the Q&A. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the first question from the line of Shane Carberry from Goodbody.

Well done on a fantastic FY '25 set of results. If I can go with 3, please. The first one, maybe just a bit of an update, Michael, in terms of where we stand from a land market perspective, what you're seeing currently? And how we should think about kind of the land purchasing strategy through 2026, given how you've kind of bolstered the land bank over the last couple of years? The second then, I just want to expand on Slide 8 a little bit more. I think it's really interesting to see kind of the level of pricing from Cairn versus the rest of the industry. How should I think about that? Is it really just a scale point? Or is there a little bit more kind of going on there in terms of where you've been able to keep prices at a more affordable level versus the rest of the industry? And then the third point is really just, I guess, around Slide 9 and you kind of go through the government policies regarding kind of high-density. Does that make you think any differently about the kind of mix going forward? I know you've kind of reiterated that the medium-term mix guidance. Will that be a little bit more gradual now towards the kind of 50-50 split given the initiatives and policy in place from a high-density perspective? Or just does it make you think any differently about the mix going forward would be helpful.

Yes. I suppose let's start on the high density one, if that's okay, Shane. I mean, I suppose what we're trying to put across today is we have been, I suppose, speaking to government for many, many years now about what we saw as a kind of almost a natural cap on the number of homes that could be built at lower densities, particularly in locations closer to employment, urban areas, close in -- in and around our cities. And there was very obvious reasons why and probably nobody's fault necessarily that apartments weren't being built. What we've seen over the last couple of years is a real recognition of that. You'd be aware, for example, that the government have tweaked guidelines for apartments to try and make them more viable in terms of how they are designed. They still -- they are still at an incredibly high standard by any international comparison. Streamlining the planning system is a massive help also. But what's particularly helpful is the fact that now we're seeing more realizable demand. We've had a lot more incoming, Ritchie, in the last 12 months from PRS capital looking at Ireland again, we've seen some transactions in the multifamily area. And we believe Croi Conaithe is very impactful because I think Croi Conaithe recognized that not all homebuyers, many of them do want houses, and we have to recognize that the average home first-time buyer of a Cairn home has probably grown from about 31, 32 years of age up to 38, 39 years of age in the last number of years. So people are older, unfortunately, buying their first home, but many people are now choosing to purchase an apartment. And what we saw in our first couple of Croi Conaithe launches, which is very encouraging, was younger working people buying apartments. So that's how we think about mix, I suppose, Shane. We will continue to absolutely prioritize homebuyers and private homebuyers. But thankfully now, we're able to offer them apartments as well as houses and duplexes. So that's the point we're trying to put across today. I think, thankfully, if I think about the land market in 2 ways. Firstly, our land market, we can afford now to be very strategic. We have a large land bank. We're still building a land in Seven Mills that we bought, for example, in 2016. And that certainly helps us with our margins. And we've managed to replace a lot of great land, but now we can think about replacing our land with more strategic opportunities and Richie talked a little bit about that in our presentation. Almost all of those transactions are off market. I think Cairn has built a reputation over the last 10 or 11 years as a trusted acquirer of land. Many private landowners who are seeing some of the land rezoned want to get Cairn involved in that journey, and we can step in and do option deals, which is where most of the growth will probably come in our land bank. So you now see a land bank that's wholly owned, a land bank that is more strategic and a pipeline that's mainly strategic and also will include some new joint ventures. So as we go through this year, I think our shareholders can expect to see more information filtering through on the pipeline of particularly partnerships and new joint ventures, Richard, that we're working on. And more broadly in the land market, I'm encouraged that it's much more active in the last 6 to 12 months. It probably, again, maybe is a reflection of positive government policy that there is more realizable demand. But we're seeing more activity in the land market. We're seeing other homebuilders acquiring land. And I think that's very positive. We've certainly seen a tick up in transactions in the land area. In terms of how we control our cost, look, this has to be how a homebuilder must think today. What we've tried to put across in this slide is that all developed economies face the same challenge. And unfortunately, throughout Europe and indeed Ireland, the average cost of a home has now moved up to, in most cases, between 7 and 10x average salary in those countries across the board. So it's not a unique challenge in Ireland. And when homes -- and when some of the costs that we're facing and that we project are going to continue to challenge us and our industry more broadly, we have to work exceptionally hard to try and control those costs. We do that in multiple ways. I mean we design and deliver our homes based on the knowledge that we've built up over a decade. We understand we were probably first to market on standardizing our unit types, streamlining our supply chain, partnering with our subcontractors. We've had a very active innovation strategy for a number of years, looking at product replacement, off-site manufacturing techniques that are all now embedded in our operation platform. And on a daily basis, we have 5,000 or 6,000 people working on our sites. So we have an incredible advantage in Ireland when it comes to our procurement, our scale, our partnerships. So it's a long answer, Shane, but all of that plays into the results you see or saw today on Slide 8, which is about 4.9%.

We will now take the next question from the line of Jonathan Coubrough from Deutsche Bank.

Can you hear me okay?

Indeed, Jonny.

Great. Yes. Firstly, in terms of the WIP investment, it would be helpful to hear how much of that has gone into houses versus apartments and how much into your first-time buyer products that perhaps it's hard to disaggregate it on your mixed-tenure sites, but any detail you can provide on where that WIP is being invested would be very helpful. And also going back to the land bank in the results statement, you provide detail on your wholly owned land bank in terms of average plot cost. I'd just be interested to hear how you think margins would compare in your strategic land bank and the strategic pipeline as well. And then just to round that off, you mentioned there, Mike, you've got a very long land bank and so you're able to be strategic. Do you have a target for how many units you'd like to have under option? Or is it just going to be opportunity led?

Yes, it's a good question. On the last one, I might hand over to Richie just on WIP and chat a little bit about the profile of our work in progress and indeed, some of the projects that are probably fair to say are supported with forward-funding as well, which helped that. But I suppose in terms of the go forward, we're not going to set a target, and the strategic land options that we'll take on have to be for us in the right locations. They have to be accretive. The good news is that most landowners see Cairn adding significant value and want to get us on board early days. In some cases, for example, some of the land we're auctioning isn't even zoned yet for residential housing, but that's part of our expertise is being able to identify those opportunities and help journey land through zoning and then on to full planning and construction. So I would say more of our -- if we look forward, I think it's fair to say, Richie, we don't see a massive capital investment in new land in terms of the type of land acquisition we saw in '25. But we'd like to see, with our unit output now going over 3,000 units from next year, you'd certainly like to see the entire land bank, including strategic land sitting at about 20,000 unit level, but 30% or 40% of that could be strategic or joint ventures where in some cases, on those JVs, we're not building on Cairn land. Do you want to talk about WIP and maybe the land bank, any of your thoughts, Richie, on the land bank?

Yes, to start with, so the WIP investment, obviously, look, you saw numbers that obviously increased our WIP investments quite significantly and obviously up to EUR 801 million. The big growth probably from FY 2024 on a relative basis was increasing into housing demand. So we would have seen a big uptick in WIP investment into our housing from '24 into '25. But obviously, we continue obviously to do and execute a number of other forward fund contracts with state-funded partners as well. So that also fed into some of the growth in FY '25. And I suppose, look, the big call out then on that is just obviously what our closed and forward order book looks like and that growth of about 33% that we've seen from '24 as well, which has been very positive. I think one point to just add to what Michael's comment just on the land acquisition and probably the replacement cost of our land bank and can we still generate accretive returns? And the answer is yes, we can because if when we're structuring these land acquisitions now, we have better optionality with regard to initial capital outlay upfront. And we're also obviously able to execute and look to execute some forward fund contracts as well, which obviously drive -- which drive a return on equity profile. You may obviously give us some size on the gross margin side, so that's fine if you're getting your WIP paid for.

We will now take the next question from the line of Colin Sheridan from Davy.

Thanks for the presentation. A few from me, if that's all right. First, just on build costs. Clearly, a great result in 2025. I guess, given the environment that we're in at the moment and maybe looking down higher energy costs, maybe give us a feel for how well contracted and hedged you are for going forward '26 and maybe into '27 at this point in time? The Second one then, just on the '27 guidance. I mean, clearly, it's a measure of how confident you are yourselves that you're talking about those volumes already. And maybe just give us a little bit of color in terms of those targeted 3,200, how many are fully planned? How many are already on site? How many are maybe in the order book? That kind of color would be really good. And then maybe just a quick one on the order book. I mean, clearly, huge growth into the end of the year on that front. I wonder on the private side, are you kind of reaching the limits in terms of how far forward you can sell those units with kind of mortgage approvals. And given how really large the order book is relative to, say, the revenue for this year? Some color on that would be great.

Yes. I might come back to Richie just on the outlook and on the build cost, the environment externally and how we think about that. Look, I think what you're going to see, actually, Colin, is you're going to see that order book continue to grow for us. And the majority of that growth as we go out throughout the year is going to be in private sales. What we're seeing is customers with more realizable demand now, Colin, that includes Croi Conaithe, which I mentioned earlier, where buyers of apartments are able to, in some cases, purchase a 2-bed apartment for a mortgage that's averaging just sub EUR 1,000 a month for 2-bed apartments in locations that might rent for EUR 2,000 to EUR 2,500 a month. It's an incredibly compelling proposition for new homebuyers. And thankfully, we've seen significant take-up on our first home -- the government's First Home Schemes and Help to Buy. So what we're seeing is buyers well positioned to forward purchase and know that they've got a home acquired that might be ready in 3 to 6 months. So you're going to see that order book growing. Our 3,200 projection for 2027 is all on active sites, Colin, not on sites we haven't yet commenced. So we're very comfortable. We wouldn't go out with that guidance if we weren't absolutely comfortable with that number. It is a significant step up, but we invested and prepared ourselves for that. We were very clear with our shareholders that we were prepared to forego buybacks in a period when we really liked our opportunity. We liked our investment into our business at the type of ROEs and the growing ROEs we were seeing as a business, that was very compelling for us. And we're really pleased that's paying off for our shareholders.

Yes. I'll just probably cover the build cost inflation point. Obviously, we called out this morning, obviously, what we realized on inflation. Last year, we're, obviously, circa kind of 1% compared to kind of broader industry was at 2%. And when we move forward into '26, we're 75% procured on our active sites and probably about 50% procured on 2027.

The only thing I'd add, Colin, which I suppose, just in terms of that growing order book, it's also fair to say that we have focused a significant amount of our land acquisition towards low density, and we're growing our first-time buyer market share quite aggressively. But that's not at the expense of the compelling products and apartments we offer for the state. The Land Development Agency and ASPs are not going to address the affordability challenge buying houses and small apartment schemes. They need scale and they're bigger now and professionally run operating platforms, and they need large apartment schemes in urban areas to address the challenge. You all know the type of level of applications they get for new crowd projects and the level of demand for affordable rental. So that's still a very strong growth area for us. Ritchie mentioned the number of projects we now have on the forward fund. That's really supportive of the growth as well. I'm not sure we could grow as aggressively if it was all being funded from our balance sheet, Richie, and it just supports that higher growth rate.

We will now take the next question from the line of Edward Prest from Berenberg.

I've got a couple, please. Firstly, with a sales rate of 4.2%, it looks to me as though you are selling at the -- very much at the rate you can build. Are there anything -- any limiting factors that are sort of -- any potential road bumps that you think could hold up your build rate? I'm thinking kind of infrastructure and labor availability down the line. And then secondly, as you approach 3,000 homes in the -- 3,000 and 3,200 homes in the coming years, do you think of a limit in terms of the number of homes that you could -- sort of you could look to before you might start to cannibalize existing sites kind of with your current footprint?

I suppose on the build cost one, I'm not sure we fully understood, the last question either, Ritchie, on the kind of geopolitical. Look, it's obviously a big watch out for us when we think of about our go forward. We'll have to see how the situation evolves. We are about 75% procured for this year and 50% into next year. But as that situation evolves, it could have a significant impact on our supply chain. So it's something that just we have to be aware of, and we'll monitor it closely. Beyond that, in terms of -- on that watch out for us, we don't see a limit to what we build, but we do think about relative market share. And I suppose one of the ways we can answer that question is Cairn today is a 3,000 unit business in a market that's likely to be growing to 40,000 units a year. That's still a relatively small market share for the business. And if housing output grows to 50,000 units or beyond, we certainly don't see limits to our growth. But I think as I said in the intro, we have to -- we've worked hard to build a brand reputation. We've got to protect our quality. And I think some of the CAGR rates we showed and those graphs of the 10 years just shows how considered we were in how we grew our output. We didn't necessarily grow our output in big chunks because we want to retain that quality and we care a lot about health and safety, obviously, as well, which is critically important. So that's a couple of the points that you asked.

Yes. I think there -- you just obviously referenced the sales rate. And yes, obviously, you would have seen and heard this morning going through the presentation, look, demand is exceptionally strong in the market. So hence why the sales rate is so strong. And are there any headwinds in -- that could impact that? Look, obviously, what we spend a lot of time in the business is planning to try and get ahead of some of those roadblocks. Some of those roadblocks could be outside of our control from a connections point of view. But barring that part, what we're seeing right now, I suppose we're reasonably comfortable with our launches coming up in the next number of months that we would hope to see similar sales rates.

Yes. And you're referring there to energy connections, like we've seen an improving landscape very much with energy providers in Ireland. Water infrastructure is improving. The government set up an infrastructure task force to address many of the challenges around infrastructure, which I think was a massively positive move. And that committee are staying on to help support the implementation of significant infrastructure spend in Ireland over the next 2, 3, 4 years. So -- and thankfully, the Irish government have the capital available to invest in the infrastructure. So we'd also say that's really supportive of us and our growth opportunity.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Michael Stanley for closing remarks.

Thank you, Sandra. Thank you all for joining. Look forward to seeing you in person, many of you over the next couple of days or catching up with you over Teams. Thank you for your continued support for Cairn and for our business and wishing you a good day. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.