Shares in Cairn and Glenveagh fall despite Irish builders preparing to return to work
Shares in the two Irish stock market-listed home builders, Cairn Homes and Glenveagh Properties have continued to fall even as the builders return to work and the shares of their counterparts in Britain, including Barratt Developments have climbed as sites restart there too.
Cairn and Glenveagh have been, along with the Irish banks and many property firms, hard hit on the markets for some time as investors turned away from all-things related to property in Ireland as the threats of a hard Brexit loomed and dissipated and subsequently reappeared and lingered.
Since the onset of the new crisis involving the shuttering of sites soon after St Patrick's Day, Cairn and Glenveagh shares have unsurprisingly been hit again, along with most other stocks in Ireland and Britain.
Shares in Cairn Homes - which is the largest home-builder in the State with active sites across Leinster and a development site in Cork, with plans to expand further in Kilkenny and Galway, -- fell 2.5% in the latest session and have slid about 37% in the past year.
The shares which hit an all-time low in the middle of March as building sites closed, have since recovered somewhat amid plans to bring back builders this month.
The stock market values Cairn Homes at around €600m.
Glenveagh Properties shares also fell sharply in the latest session, by 3.2%, and have dropped by around 28% from May 2019.
Its shares reached an all-time low in the middle of March and have also recovered somewhat since then.
Glenveagh is now valued at around €500m.
Along with the banks, other Irish property firms have also had a torrid time, with losses for Hibernia Reit and Irish Residential Properties Reit, or Ires, falling by up to 24%.
Last week, Britain’s largest house-builder Barratt Developments said it planned to reopen all its sites in England this week and aimed to have many workers back at by the end of the month.
Its house-building sites and showrooms in Scotland would remain shut, however.
Barratt shares have fallen in the past year to value the builders at £5bn (€5.7bn).
Shares in another major British housebuilder, Persimmon have risen 10% in the past year.
Meanwhile, the two main Irish banks have had mixed fortunes in the latest session.
Both AIB and Bank of Ireland released updates earlier this week which took account for the first time of their initial costs of the Covid-19 economic crisis on their loan books and operations this year.
Both banks are expected to provide for further loan losses as unemployment reaches an unprecedented peak this summer.
The banks also outlined the exposure to their most vulnerable customers in areas such as pubs, restaurants, tourism, and travel.
Shares in AIB - which is 71%-owned by the Government - rose 4.4% to pare its losses to 77% in the past year.
Shares in Bank of Ireland - in which the Government has a 14% stake - fell almost 3.5% in the session to widen its losses in the past year to 74%.
