LONDON (Alliance News) - Morses Club PLC on Thursday expressed confidence for the reminder of the year after its profit grew in the first half of its current financial year.
The lender said its pretax profit increased to GBP10.0 million in 26 weeks ended August 25 from GBP7.2 million reported for the same period a year prior, as revenue rose to GBP57.5 million from GBP51.4 million.
Total credit issued rose by 4.6% to GBP86.1 million from GBP82.3 million the year before.
The result was boosted by an increase in the company's receivables, which grew to GBP68.0 million from GBP62.8 million year-on-year. Meanwhile, the number of customers declined slightly to 230,000 from 233,000.
Morses Club upped its interim dividend to 2.6 pence per share from 2.2p paid the year earlier.
"Our focus on successful integration, the sustainable growth of the loan book and high-quality lending has resulted in a robust performance across all of our key financial metrics and delivered significant earnings growth for investors," said Chief Executive Paul Smith.
"Our proven ability to successfully integrate territory builds and the progress we are making in developing new products for our customers gives us confidence in the outlook for the full year," added Smith.
The stock was trading 0.5% higher on Thursday at 142.22p per share.