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LONDON (Alliance News) - Mortgage Advice Bureau (Holdings) PLC on Tuesday reported a "strong" 2018 in which its profit and revenue both increased, with the firm hiking its dividend.
In 2018, the company's pretax profit rose 8.3% to GBP15.7 million from GBP14.5 million in 2017.
MAB's revenue increased 13% to GBP123.3 million from GBP108.8 million the year before.
The firm proposed a final dividend of 12.7 pence per share, 6.7% higher than 2017's final dividend. As a result, MAB's total dividend for 2018 is up 8.8%, to 23.3p, from the 21.4p distributed in 2017.
In 2018, the company's gross mortgage lending arranged increased 18% to GBP14.0 billion with mortgage lending through new lenders up 13% to GBP12.7 billion.
"I am delighted to report another set of strong results. Despite continued political uncertainty we have achieved robust growth in revenue," said Chief Executive Peter Brodnicki.
"MAB continues to deliver on its strategy to grow market share in all market conditions whilst maintaining a strong financial position."
MAB's share of new mortgage lending in the UK in 2018 was 4.7% compared to 4.3% in 2017.
The company said: "This growth was achieved in a weaker house purchase market during 2018. Although one or two segments of mortgage lending have risen during the year, overall housing transactions have reduced by 2.5%, hence our full year 2018 results represent a clear outperformance against the housing market."
Looking ahead, MAB noted banking trade association US Finance expects new gross mortgage lending in the UK will be GBP278 billion in 2019 but is likely to be broadly similar in the near term. The same association expects the UK product transfer market to increase from GBP160 billion in 2018.
MAB said only over the last year have "large lenders" engaged intermediaries to help them retain existing mortgage borrowers, which leads MAB to believe it can benefit from an increasing product transfer market.
MAB also said its current trading from estate agency-based appointed representative firms continued to be "muted", similar to the end of 2018, due to the uncertainty from Brexit.
MAB added: "When the political climate becomes clearer, we expect to see overall confidence return. At this point we should see the start of some pent-up demand in the housing market being released and our estate agency focused appointed representative firms responding in terms of delivering adviser growth.
"We are confident our strategy, driven by our customers and their changing expectations, will continue to drive growth in MAB's market share year on year and deliver attractive returns to investors."
Shares in MAB were down 3.3% Tuesday at 556.20 pence each.
