Oranges are not the only fruit...

...as today we have had final results from Persimmon (PSN), a fruit and one of the largest UK house builders. As with other house builders these are strong, as one would expect, so I won't dwell on the detail for which I suggest you look into the full announcement at their investor website. On the income front worth noting though that they boosted their planned return of capital under their plan to 110p again this year and they boosted the extent of this further by suggesting a similar level of returns for the next five years too. At this mornings price of around 2050p this would give a decent yield of 5.4%.

While on the earnings front the 173p seemed to well ahead of forecasts and close to the 176p currently forecast for the coming year. So I presume we could see some upgrades to earnings and dividend forecasts on the back of these numbers. However, this may be required to keep the shares going as others in the sector have been weak and this one looks a bit expensive on a PE of 11.6x before any upgrades and they are not far off resistance from their highs last September. Thus I probably wouldn't chase it up here and if you wanted a house builder the higher scoring stocks in the sector on the Compound Income Scores are Bellway (BWY), which is in the Compound Income Scores Portfolio and the lower yielding Inland Homes (INL) if you are not so worried about income.

Meanwhile amongst a flood of other announcements and dividend cuts from BHP Billiton (BLT), Ladbrokes (LAD), and Standard Chartered (STAN) I've seen a 22.6% increase in my dividend from Provident Financial Group (PFG) which was about 2% better than forecast. This non standard lender continues to do well on the back of restructuring their home collected credit business, the acquisition of car loan business Money Barn and growth in their Vanquis bank business which includes a credit card operation too. The shares have however factored much of this growth in as they have doubled in the last two years to their current 3300p or so and now trade on a PE of around 18x with a yield of 4% for the current year on the back of a further 10% growth. Thus they seem fairly fully valued to me although they did trade up to 3600p recently. They are probably a strong hold though for income and growth as they continue to fund their dividend and growth from internally generated capital, including their latest venture into on line loans under the Satsuma brand.