Arrow Global 2017 Final Results
Chairman's statement
Another strong year of growth and delivery
I am pleased to be able to present another strong set of financial results during a year which saw the Company continue to register significant growth and add another market to our geographical footprint.
We have continued to diversify our earnings, with further growth in our high quality, capital light asset management business, which grew revenues by 53.5%. We are a more diversified Group than ever before, growing the geographical and asset class mix of our debt purchase business by investing 36.7% of our capital in the UK, 24.7% in Portugal, 18.9% in Italy and 19.7% in Benelux. During the year, we completed the acquisitions of Zenith in Italy and Mars Capital in the UK and Ireland, significantly enhancing our European capabilities.
Profit after tax increased by 51.7% to £39.9 million giving an increase in basic earnings per share of 51.0% to 22.8p. Financially, we have again delivered against our guidance, with underlying basic earnings per share increasing 24.1% to 32.4p and underlying return on equity increasing by 3.8 percentage points to 32.9%.
This strong performance enables us to propose a final 2017 dividend of 8.1p, bringing the full year dividend to 11.3p (2016: 9.1p) which is at the top of our payout range. (and up 24.2%) Once again, balance sheet strength and management is key to the business' success and earlier in the year we undertook a highly successful refinancing, securing a material reduction in our cost of funding with our weighted average cost of debt falling below 4.0% at the same time as extending duration.
