17th Jun 2019 10:46
(Alliance News) - FairFX Group PLC said Monday it expects trading for the full year to be in line with market expectations.
Speaking at the payments processing firm's annual general meeting Monday, Chair John Pearson said 2018 was a "year of significant growth" for FairFX.
"Turnover and revenue growth continued to be strong, both organically and via acquisition, whilst we also made further investment in our technology to increase the functionality and capacity in our platform for continued expansion," said Pearson.
In 2018, pretax profit surged to GBP2.1 million from GBP229,449 the year prior. This was after revenue rose 68% to GBP26.1 million from GBP15.5 million the year before.
"The group has enjoyed a strong year to date in 2019, both in terms of turnover and improved margins, which is a consequence of further rationalisation of the supply chain," Pearson added.
In March, the company said its supply chain rationalisations strategy announced in late January had "progressed ahead of schedule." In the same update, FairFX noted it had secured "better financial terms" with existing supply chain partners, meaning the firm expects to "benefit from a greater share of revenues going forward."
Pearson continued: "In addition, the investments we made in 2018 are now flowing through in terms of new products being released in 2019; with one such example being the granting of the Bank of England settlement accounts and direct access to the Faster Payments scheme."
The Faster Payments Scheme is a payment system introduced to reduce the payment time between customer accounts made from different banks. The initiative was set up to reduce the time from three working days on the old system to a few seconds.
FairFX was allowed to join the system through the Bank of England's New Access Model, which was introduced to "inject more competition and innovation" into UK payments systems.
Shares in FairFX were up 0.5% in London on Monday at 110.50 pence each.