RETIREMENT housebuilder McCarthy & Stone has seen underlying profit rise 40 per cent and says it is on course to double the size of the business.

Underlying profit before tax at the Bournemouth-headquartered business reached £88.4m in the year ended August 31 – up from £63.2m the previous year – while revenue grew 25 per cent to £485.7m.

Legal completions rose 15 per cent to 1,923 and the net average selling price of its properties was up 12 per cent to £239,000.

Debt was down from £48.9m to £33.1m at the end of the year.

The company said it was on track to double the size of the business to more than 3,000 unit sales a year in the medium term.

Group chairman John White said: “It has been another strong year of profitable growth for McCarthy & Stone. We continue to capitalise on the increasing demand for specialist retirement housing, driven by a rapidly ageing population and a structural under-supply of this form of accommodation in the UK.

“The group is well-positioned to benefit from this unprecedented market opportunity, and the scale and quality of our land bank provides significant visibility over the medium-term for our potential rapid growth.

“Against this backdrop, we have increased our investment target for land and build to £2.5bn over the next four years and remain on track to deliver 3,000 specialist retirement apartments per year over the medium term, doubling the size of the business.

“In parallel, we continue to make operational improvements to the business to deliver improved capital turn, ensuring that our increasing margins and profit translate into higher returns.

"The group also increased its order book of forward sales at the end of the financial year and the early weeks of trading have been encouraging, with our weekly net reservation rate 23 per cent ahead of last year for the first five weeks.

“Total forward sales, including legal completions in the year to date, stood at £177m on October 2 2015.”

The company said it had acquired a record 90 new sites, with a land bank of 10,087 plots, equivalent to more than five years’ supply at attractive margins. Terms had been agreed on another 468.