LONDON (Alliance News) - Jarvis Securities PLC Thursday reported an 11% increase in its interim pretax profit, boosted by a rise in client numbers.
In a statement, Jarvis Securities said that it made a GBP1.3 million pretax profit in the first six months of 2014, compared with GBP1.2 million in the corresponding period a year earlier. Revenue increased to GBP3.7 million from GBP3.5 million, while administrative expenses edged up only slightly to GBP2.0 million.
Jarvis Securities proposed a third interim dividend for the year of 4.25 pence per share. Jarvis said that it is "highly" cash generative, with increased profits leading to increased dividend payments. It said its dividend policy remains to return two-thirds of post tax profit to shareholders in quarterly instalments throughout the financial year.
Chairman Andrew James Grant said that the improved interim earnings reflect the growth the business has experienced in the latter half of last year.
"The main focus at Jarvis for the past six months has been to identify and harness improvements from the new IT infrastructure that we adopted late last year. Many of these improvements are not visible to external users and clients, but we anticipate will lead to improving margins from reduced costs and efficiencies," Grant said in a statement.
"Our core systems are now more robust and scalable than under our previous configuration which again we hope will reduce marginal costs per trade. We are in a position where we can continue to grow our client base and transaction volumes without needing any significant further changes to our platform or additional capital outlay," he added.
Grant, who is also the company's chief executive, said that Jarvis Securities is in the final stages of preparation and testing for the launch of our new online trading platform. The move is designed to improve interaction with customers.
Jarvis Securities shares were Thursday quoted up 9.9% at 477.00p.
By Samuel Agini; samagini@alliancenews.com; @samuelagini
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Jarvis Securities (JIM)