London - Virgin Money Holdings (UK) PLC, one of many smaller banks seeking to challenge Britain's big four lenders, said its full-year pretax profit more than doubled as it sold more mortgages.
Shares of Virgin Money, which is set to enter the FTSE-250 index this month, rose as much 4 percent early on Thursday.
The retail bank, part-owned by billionaire entrepreneurs Sir Richard Branson and Wilbur Ross, said it expected its share of the annual gross mortgage lending market to remain at more than 3 percent “in each of the years to come”.
Its net interest margin also rose last year.
“We set out to be a credible and effective challenger to the large incumbent banks and I believe we have laid an excellent foundation on which to realise our ambition,” Chief Executive Jayne-Anne Gadhia said in a statement.
Virgin Money is among a number of new banks looking to break the dominance of Lloyds Banking Group Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays Plc and HSBC, which account for more than three quarters of lending in the UK.
Underlying pretax profit rose to 121.2 million pounds for the year ended December 31 from 53.4 million pounds a year earlier.
Net interest margin increased by 24 basis points to 1.50 percent and net interest income rose 27 percent to 366.1 million pounds.
Virgin Money had a nearly 4 percent share of the mortgage market in January, the bank said, citing Bank of England data.
Mortgage balances rose 12 percent to 21.9 billion pounds against market growth of 1.4 percent, the Newcastle-based lender said.
As of Wednesday's close, Virgin Money's shares had risen about 13 percent since the bank listed in November. They rose a further 2.6 percent to 327.5 pence as of 08h07 GMT.
Reuters