Time Finance Reports Record Profits and Lending Book Hits £250 Million Milestone

For lenders, scale matters. A bigger book can support higher earnings, better operational leverage and stronger relationships with funding partners. In simple terms, once the platform is built, more business can improve profitability faster than revenue alone might suggest.

That helps explain one of the quirks in this update. Revenue rose by 4%, while profit before tax rose by 6% and pre-exceptional profit rose by 8%. The company says increased operational efficiencies drove margins, and the numbers back that up.

There is another supportive detail tucked into the statement: deferred income rose 17% to £31.3 million. Deferred income is revenue that has effectively been booked for future periods rather than recognised all at once, so it gives useful visibility over earnings still to come.

Credit quality stays steady as Time Finance pushes secured lending

This is the part I would focus on most as a retail investor. A lender can post lovely growth numbers for a while, but if arrears then spike and losses follow, the whole thing quickly looks less clever. That does not seem to be happening here.

Net arrears were 4.8% of the gross lending book at 31 May 2026, compared with 4.6% a year earlier. That is a slight increase, so it is not perfect, but it is hardly alarming in the context of 15% lending book growth.

Better still, net bad debt write-offs were 0.9% of the average gross lending book, compared with 1.0% last year. So although arrears edged up a touch, actual losses remained very well controlled. That is exactly the sort of trade-off investors want to see in a growing specialist lender.

Management also says a key pillar of the strategy through to 31 May 2028 is more secured lending. In practice, that means more business in Invoice Finance and the hard element of Asset Finance, where lending is backed by invoices or physical assets. These two areas made up over 95% of new lending volume in FY 2025/26 and now account for over 89% of the total lending book.

That shift matters because secured lending is generally lower risk than unsecured lending. It will not eliminate losses, of course, but it can improve recovery outcomes if customers run into trouble. In a choppy economy, that is a sensible place to be.

Funding headroom above £80 million gives Time Finance room to keep growing

Growth is only useful if the company can fund it. On that front, the update looks reassuring. Time Finance says it has extended and enhanced funding facilities with supportive, long-term partners, leaving headroom in excess of £80 million at 31 May 2026.

That gives the group capacity to keep expanding the lending book without immediately needing fresh capital, at least based on what is disclosed here. It also suggests lenders behind the scenes are comfortable enough with the business model and credit performance to keep backing it.

Net tangible assets also rose 14% to £50.1 million. That gives the balance sheet a bit more muscle and provides another layer of comfort as the book gets larger.

What looks strong, what looks less exciting, and what investors should watch next

What looks strong in this Time Finance RNS

• Record revenue, record profits and a record lending book.
• 20 consecutive quarters of lending book growth.
• Margins improved, which suggests good cost control and operating leverage.
• Bad debt write-offs stayed low despite growth.
• Funding headroom above £80 million supports the next leg of expansion.

What is less exciting or still needs watching

• Revenue growth of 4% is solid, but slower than lending book growth of 15%.
• Net arrears moved up slightly to 4.8% from 4.6%.
• The figures are unaudited, so the September results still matter.
• Dividend, earnings per share and any formal guidance upgrades were not disclosed in this update.

The next milestone is the audited annual report on 23 September 2026, when the company will also give a Q1 2026/27 trading update. That should tell investors whether the momentum seen here has carried into the new financial year.

My view on the Time Finance full-year trading update

I think this is a clearly positive update. It shows a lender growing at pace, improving profitability and keeping a firm grip on credit quality, which is not an easy combination to pull off.

The most encouraging part is not just the £250.9 million lending book milestone. It is the fact that management got there while holding write-offs at 0.9% and leaning harder into secured lending. That makes the growth look more durable, not just more dramatic.

If I were looking for a nit to pick, it would be the slight rise in arrears and the fact that revenue growth was more modest than book growth. But neither point is enough to spoil the overall picture.

In short, Time Finance appears to be doing exactly what it said it would do: grow the lending book, improve operational leverage and enhance profitability. For shareholders, that is the kind of boringly effective progress that can compound nicely over time.