The S & U PLC (LON:SUS) annual general meeting today promises to be a buoyant affair, with the lender confirming trading remains strong.
Business at Advantage Finance, its motor finance arm, "remains excellent", the company said this morning.
The fiscal first quarter saw a record number of loan applications, and new loan transactions were up a fifth year-on-year, while average loan quality was even better than it was a year ago.
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Net receivables now stand at £210mln, the company told investors, representing a 30% year-on-year increase.
Customer numbers are at a record level and have now passed 46,000; to put that into perspective, at the end of September 2016 the company was celebrating customer numbers passing the 40,000 mark.
About the only fly in the ointment - more of a midge than a fly, really - was a slight increase in the rolling 12 months impairment-to-revenue measurement to 21.0% from 20.1% at the end of January, reflecting changes in the product mix at Advantage.
Nevertheless overall debt quality remains good.
S & U said Advantage's overall debt quality remains good, and collections now exceed £9mln a month.
Having sold off its doorstep lending operation a couple of years back the company decided last year to branch out from its core vehicle loan business to pilot a property bridging finance business trading under the name Aspen Bridging.
Aspen has now started trading, is expanding its broker network and is refining its product offering.
"S&U is confident of the group's sustainable and steady growth. On consensus estimates, shares trade on 10x Jan '18 earnings or 1.6x Jan '18 NAV [net asset value] for 16.5% ROE [return on equity] and are expected to yield 5.2%," Peel Hunt said.
Shares were unchanged at 2,004p after an hour of trading.