Watkin Jones has ‘continued to see strong operational delivery’ in the six months to 31 March, according to this morning’s first-half trading update, with in-build schemes ‘achieving margins in line with our stated guidance’. The residential-for-rent developer and manager expects operating profit to be at a similar level to HY25, despite lower revenue caused by lower levels of transactional activity. The group’s agile response to changing market dynamics continues to underpin our maintained FY26 profitability estimates at this point, but we recognise the group’s caution on ‘greater uncertainty with regards to future transactional liquidity conditions’.