Sales of secondhand Porsches, Aston Martins and Mercedes have helped car dealership Pendragon boost its profits by more than a third and double its dividend.
In the year to 31 December, pretax profit, excluding non-trading items, rose 36.2% to £60.2m. Pretax profit jumped 66% to £64.6m.
The company increased the annual dividend to 0.9p a share from 0.4p.
Trevor Finn, Pendragon’s chief executive, said: “We have doubled the dividend to reward our shareholders, and our strong balance sheet and cashflow generation will ensure we can maintain this dividend level alongside our expansion plans.
“We are confident that 2015 will be another year of good performance, with group performance in line with current expectations for the year.”
Pendragon’s strongest business was its Stratstone luxury car operation, which sells brands such as Aston Martin, Ferrari and Jaguar. Operating profit at Stratstone, which is based in London’s upmarket Mayfair district, increased 32% to £35.5m. Profit growth was driven by sales of used cars, particularly Aston Martin, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche.
Operating profit at the mainstream Evans Halshaw business rose 17% to £32.6m, also fuelled used car sales.
UK consumers bought more new cars in 2014 than in any year in the last decade as cheap finance deals and the growing economy fuelled demand. Sales rose 9.3% to 2.5bn registrations and returned to pre-recession levels. Sales rose in January for the 35thconsecutive month – the longest period of growth since records began in 1959.
Pendragon said sales would continue to increase this year but not as quickly as in 2014. The market will now stabilise at between 2.5m and 2.6m registrations of new cars a year.
