A North West-based identity verification specialist has reported a record year of trading.
Chester firm GB Group (GBG) plc this morning revealed it has achieved £34.4m pre-tax profits to March 31 - up by 66.1% on the year before, while revenues grew by 9.3% to £217.7m.
The business, which employs around 1,000 people, achieved its highest team and customer engagement scores since being founded in 1989, while a final dividend of 3.4p per share was declared in the annual results announcement to the markets.
Continued strong cash generation resulted in a net cash position of £21.1m, with the firm also having opened an AI-focused centre of excellence during the period.
That's as well as acquiring fraud investigation platform HooYu Investigate, and selling its employ and comply business to a global background check company headquartered in the USA.
Chris Clark, CEO, said: "Today we report a record financial performance together with our best ever customer and team member engagement scores. In the fast changing global economic environment this is an excellent outcome and I sincerely thank each and every one of our team in all territories who all played a part in this success.
"The pandemic has accelerated customer digitalisation initiatives and permanently shifted more consumer activity online. Satisfying consumer expectations for simple online journeys, while meeting the needs of businesses to reduce fraud and trade in compliant ways, creates significant long-term opportunities for GBG.
"In the year ahead we will continue to invest in our people, technology and channel to market capabilities in order to further converge our Location, Identity and Fraud solutions, create new propositions and capitalise on the growth opportunities our strategy identifies."
In terms of the year since March, the firm's statement said it had seen a "good start" with trading in line with the board's expectations.
