Time Finance PLC shares jumped on Wednesday, after the Bath, England-based firm said profit more than doubled in the nine months ended February 28.
Time Finance is a finance provider to small & medium businesses. Its shares were up 17% to 26.15 pence each in London on Wednesday morning.
Time Finance said that in the nine months to February 28 revenue was up 28% to £20.0 million from £15.6 million year-on-year. The company said that revenue has been driven primarily by growth in both the Invoice Finance division and the ’Hard Asset’ subset of the Asset division.
Pretax profit in the period has nearly tripled to £3.0 million from £1.1 million.
‘These results reflect the continued success of streamlining the group to focus on core, own-book lending to UK businesses; with significant increases now being seen in the lending book, revenues and profits and across other key performance indicators,’ the company said.
Looking ahead, Time Finance said there has been ‘strong visibility’ of future earnings with unearned income up 30% to £19.4 million at February 28 from £14.9 million.
The company added that this trading momentum has given the boar further confidence that full-year trading will now be ahead of the latest market expectations, with pretax profit for the full year now now expected to be at least £3.6 million.
Financial 2023 market expectations are currently revenue of £25.7 million and pretax profit of £3.2 million. In financial 2022, Time Finance reported revenue of £23.6 million and pretax profit of £1.1 million.
Chief Executive Officer Ed Rimmer commented: ‘Despite the well-publicised wider macro-economic ’headwinds’, the group has continued to grow at a faster rate than expected, demonstrating that demand for finance from UK businesses is robust. The group’s multi-product tailored offering to UK SMEs, its own-book lending strategy and its quality of service have become ever more appreciated by our introducers and I am confident that we can deliver increasing value for our shareholders’.
The company will provide an update on trading for the full year to May 31 2023 in late June 2023.
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