LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - Finance company Orchard Funding grew revenues 31.4% over the twelve months ended 31 July to a record £4.56m due to a "significant increase" in overall lending throughout the period.
Orchard's profit after tax rose 34% to £1.36m after its heightened level of investment during 2016 began to bleed into the Luton-based firm's bottom line.

The group lent £63.5m to clients over the year, marking a 30.5% increase on the £48.56m it doled out a year earlier.

Orchard said on Tuesday that it had improved its liquidity position after a new bank funder had provided it with a facility in August, one year after it increased its drawdown facility with Barclays from £10m to £15m.

Discussing the year ahead, Ravi Takhar, chief executive officer of Orchard, said, "We will continue to focus on our core markets and as we have already demonstrated this will result in an increased share of those markets."

"Trading since the period end has continued to be robust and in line with management expectations. We have a number of strategic avenues available to us to support the group's growth and we look forward to the year ahead with cautious optimism," he added.

Earnings per share jumped 33.2% to 6.26p.

As of 1100 BST, shares had picked up 1.81% to 101.30p.

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