Equals Group plc (AIM: EQLS), which primarily provides payment solutions to SMEs, ended the first six months of 2022 with a record revenue of £31.3 million. It was a year-over-year jump of 84 percent.
The company changed its focus from retail business to the B2B sector after the impact of the pandemic. With this, the revenue from its international payments business soared to £16.1 million, which was a yearly jump of more than 64 percent.
Other business divisions also witnessed healthy growth: the revenue of the company's cards business increased 41 percent to £5.5 million and the travel cash business by 400 percent to £0.5 million. While revenue from its banking business remained flat at £2.8 million, the solutions division took off, bringing £6.2 million, which increased 20 times in a year.
“We are extremely pleased to see an 84% increase in our revenues in the first half with all segments performing exceptionally well,” Equals’ Chief Executive Officer, Ian Strafford-Taylor said in a statement.
“We believe that our revenues are highly 'inflation-resistant' and that this should be beneficial for the Group and our Shareholders in the second half of 2022 and beyond.”
Solid Profits
Further, the payments-focused company ended the period with an estimated gross profit of £15 million, which is an increase of 47 percent from the figures for the first half of 2021. However, the gross profit margin declined to 48.2 percent from 50.6 percent in the second half of 2021.
The white-label business of Equals Connect is keeping the profit margin down. Without this division, the gross profit margin for H1 2022 came in at 59 percent against 60 percent in H2 2021.
Meanwhile, the London-headquartered company has strengthened its leadership with the recent hiring of Tom Kiddle as the Chief Commercial Officer of Equals Money, one of the subsidiaries of the group.
