Albemarle soars on gold-price hike

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The firm's new chairman Greville Nicholls now plans to expand from the current 115 shops.

He said: "We are now actively pursuing opportunities to add new stores and at the same time we continue to focus on improving customer service, extending our range of services and exploring new routes to market." In the past year Albemarle & Bond started offering to buy gold directly from its customers as well as allowing them to pawn it.

This helped to drive extra business and contributed £1.4 million to profits which grew by 42% to a total of £14.6 million in the year to end-June.

At the same time sales of new and secondhand jewellery grew by 3% which Nicholls described as "bucking the wider trends of retail sales".

Nicholls added: "We have made a very strong start to the new year building on the trend of our successful second half.

"We believe demand for small, competitive and flexible loans will remain strong and that we have in place the right team, store portfolio and expertise to take advantage of this opportunity."

Revenues rose 19% to £55.5 million and the board's confidence in the coming year is reflected in its 44% rise in the final dividend to 6.5p.