Belvoir Group PLC (AIM:BLV), the UK property franchise and financial services group, is confident it will continue to perform well relative to a strong market.
The company released results for 2021 that showed group revenue increased by 37% to an all-time high of £29.6mln from £21.7mln in 2020, of which 25 percentage points were accounted for by like-for-like growth.
Management services fees, seen by the company as a key underlying return from franchisees, rose 18% to £10.7mln in 2021 from £9.1mln in 2020.
Profit before tax jumped 39% to £9.3mln from £6.7mln the previous year, which the company noted marks the 25th successive year of increasing profits.
The company ended the year with net cash of £7.4mln, up from £5.9mln a year earlier, with net debt slashed to £1.3mln from £3.7mln, despite the company spending £4.4mln on two acquisitions.
The full-year dividend has been bumped up 18% to 8.5p from 7.2p.
"2021 was the busiest year for our sector in recent times with residential property sales transactions at their highest level since 2007, which boosted both our growing estate agency and financial services businesses. We worked closely with our property franchisees and financial services advisers to ensure that they were best placed to respond to the strong market conditions, which drove significant organic growth of 25%,” said Dorian Gonsalves, the chief executive officer of Belvoir.
"Given our significant recurring and reliable lettings revenue stream and our substantial financial services client base to draw upon during what is currently a strong market for remortgages, we remain confident that we will continue to perform well relative to the market as a whole, and that our business model and growth strategy will continue to deliver enhanced value for all our stakeholders,” he added.