Ramsdens Holdings PLC (RFX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Ramsdens Holding PLC Full Year Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses, where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Peter Kenyon. Good afternoon to you.

Thanks, [ Salix ]. Welcome, everybody. I think what we will do as we've done before, we will -- if I give a quick overview in case there's anybody new to Ramsdens. So that's a picture of our new Birmingham store last year. Then we had some Ts&Cs in the presentation. So this is us, that's a map of where the stores are. That's a mix of our main services. And you can see it's a reasonably balanced high chart between foreign currency, home broking, retail jewelry and the purchase of precious metals, which I often call gold buying, but that's the primary income that we get from it. And we have 169 stores as of September '24, post that period of close one at Tees Valley Airports. It's 168 as of today. We're mainly located in the north of England, Scotland and also in Wales, where we do have a pocket of stores in Kent and Essex, and we're headquartered in Teesside with a building in Middlesbrough and a building in Stockton. Customers are kind to us, and we have quite a strong Trustpilots rating there. So into some of the highlights of the past year. Strong performance. PBT up 12%, and we'll go through that in detail with the moving parts. You can see that before key income streams are all up year-on-year. And again, we'll go into those in detail. Net assets. We have a stronger balance sheet. We've increased our base EPS and we've increased our dividends for those looking for income, [indiscernible] as well as growth from their investment in Ramsdens. Clear growth strategy hasn't changed since coming to the market. It was the same prior to that. But obviously, we want to get more from our existing store estate, so that's getting better across the income streams, but also relocating where appropriate, grow our online presence and opportunity to earn more income from our online activities. Expand the store estate, we opened 7 new Bs in the year, and we've opened Grantham just after the year-end. We have a pipeline of research [ trends ] and I'll go through where we are with that at the appropriate time and we acquired our Bury franchisee during the year, which has been a very good acquisition for us. So into the actual income streams. We start off with a purchase of precious metals. Why do we start off with that one? While I think you can see in the bottom right-hand part of your screen and the graph of the gold price and how since March, it has really kicked on March '24 and obviously, into quarter 1 this year, we have the weakness of sterling. Sterling has weakened by about 8% since the budget against the dollar. And that pushes the sterling gold price higher so as we get a tailwind with this. And it's like we have some maybe excess profits and where we thought we might be. But it's been -- we buy a weight of gold from customers. And then we have choices. If we melt it, it goes through this segment. If we were to retail the gold, to refurbish it and retail, it will go through the retail jewelry. So this is purely about melting gold and you can see how it has improved over the years with an increase in gold price almost like the same period. Now what comes up and may come down, but at this moment in time, I think everyone looking forward with the uncertainties that we have weakness of sterling, probably in the short term, you think the gold will stay high. And that's the basis of, if you like, our thinking in the short term. Moving on to foreign currency exchange, which is the biggest service by percentage of gross profit. So what we do in this segment. So we sell foreign currency notes to you as you're going on holiday, we will buy your foreign currency notes back from you, when you come back from holiday. We have a multicurrency card and we also do international money transfers or international payments. So taking those each of the term, the sales of foreign currency and sales of note has been good. We're doing more transactions. We are doing it for a slightly lower amount, but we're doing it for a slightly higher margin, and that is up 6% year-on-year. Our purchases, like we said, our interims have regrettably it's a lowered average transaction value. It's a lower transaction count, and it's a slightly worse margin. Now why is that happening? Well, people are taking slightly less on holiday spending more that they have and not coming back. And if they do have some cash when they do come back, then maybe we'll keep it for the next time because people are traveling. People are still going on holiday. Now the sales and the growth of the sales that we're having, you might say we're taking market share, maybe it's a bigger market. But it's the sales of the foreign currency gives the confidence that the cash to card risk is maybe not imminent, but we have our own card. So where are we with our Ramsdens multi-currency card. It launched in September '23. We have over 17,000 cards issued in the year, 21,000 now, and it's doing really well. The -- it gives us access to the spend that the customer might have whilst they're abroad. I mean, it will grow year-on-year. And obviously, when we can strip out a meaningful amount of income, we will report on it separately, but it is growing quite nicely. Mastercard very happy where we are after 12 months. And to give you an idea, in December, there was about GBP 300,000 loaded onto the card, but there's also GBP 600,000 reloaded onto the card, where the customer in fact hasn't been into a Ramsdens branch and is spending that money abroad. And that's obviously transactions and income driving for us that we have no access to before. The last income stream is international payments. International payments was done through a partnership, if you like, with TorFX. We passed the customer on to them. They give good service, but I think we're 2 people trying to take profit from the income stream, neither of us were really pushing which are the Ramsdens international payments. So we now have our own authorization. We would expect to be live offering the service in H1 this financial year and also a little thought on how successful that is taking forward. One thing that I would probably just add on, Click & Collect in the new website, so the jewelry website -- sorry, the currency website launched in July '23. And one of the things that you can see there is the Click & Collect volumes are now 12% of the total of FX, so we've been quite successful in attracting the customer, which is while lower margin is a high transaction value of about GBP 650. Onto pawn broking next, so a solid year. You can see that the income is up -- the gross profit is up 16% year-on-year, but the loan book is only up 4%. The income trails, the loan book growth. So we have to grow the loan book and then the interest income follows. And that -- it was happened in like last year, a good growth in FY '23 and then it follows into FY '24. It's a very solid book, happy where we are with everything there. Repayment rates are still very strong. The growth in quarter 1 is still growing, but it's about 2%, 2.5% in quarter 1 of the current financial year. And you can see that, if you like, the book building coming back out of COVID, there's also building pre-COVID and it was just like steady incremental growth as a store estate grew like inflationary pressure into customers' bills, making them borrow a little bit more. We now have a new website, ramsdenspawnbrokers, that launched at the end of November. And now it is like got 6 weeks of data, and it's encouraging data. We've been testing, making sure all the system works for the new website. So customers who want to pay part payments or hit their loans off, all our functionality of reissuing that's been working. We've been soft launching the -- acquiring new leads from new lending and making sure that we have the processes correct for handling those leads efficiently and effectively whether that is lent at distance, whether that's lent by visiting the customer or whether the customer goes into a store, we've been making sure all that work, the systems are good, and we're now ready to press the button on a bit of peptic advertising and acquire customers. Now obviously, the first year, it might be a case of acquire the customers and what's the customer -- why those customers. Well pawn broking. The pawn broking is very sticky. It's got about 90% repeat customer risk and hopefully we're building new customers here through the website for the long term. So pawn broking good, solid part of our business. And then the last income stream is retail. So retail had a bit of a mixed year. H1 was tougher. H2 was a little easier. In H1, we had good growth in our secondhand jewelry and then in H2, we had good growth in our secondhand jewelry. So our value for money secondhand jewelry has done really well. In terms of premium watch sales, which is there in the chart, 38% of our retail revenue, the first half of the year, we had a bit of downward pressure. It's the pricing that is quite leveled off at the start of '24. And in March and April, we started to sell more watches as the customer had more confidence that they were not going to buy an asset, then maybe it would fall in price. And probably at the same time, watches in Switzerland were recording that their sales of premium watches were also increasing. Now the growth in premium watches carried on to H2, we just carried on into quarter 1, where we've reported our revenue rate of 15%. You can see that the growth in the retail revenue and the growth in retail profit has been driven off relatively flat, slightly down, jewelry retail stock. And 1 of the things that we were doing in the first half of the year was really concentrating on what stock do we have, how much stock do we have that's in our replenishable lines. So have we got enough for like say, the next two months worth of sales, give us time to replenish it from what we might buy from customers or have I got 6, 7 months' worth of supply and therefore, I don't really need to put more into stock and therefore, the weight of the gold that we bought from customers might be processed through for its intrinsic value rather than how would we retail at a later date. So we had a bit of a review. We're in a good place again. And we're now investing in stock to take us forward to take our retail revenue higher. And obviously, our retail gross profit higher it's just the main thing that we concentrate on. So what does that mean for our profit loss? I'll hand you over to Martin.

Thanks, Peter. As Peter said, at the start, the one of the most pleasing elements is that whilst revenue is up 14%, actually, all of the key revenue streams are up, so foreign currency, foreign broking retail and precious metals. So we've seen very, very strong growth in precious metals and that's really been driven probably from March onwards, when the gold price particularly started increasing and increased right through to the end of the year. And we've mentioned in Q1, again, that period is about 40% of on last year, and that shows a level of growth, if you like, in H2 versus H1, that's continued. So a very, very strong H2 for Precious Metals. Again, very strong H2 for the retail as well. And again, that's continued into Q1 of the new year. So very, very good. And that gross profit, if you like, fall through is very strong as well. So the margins within the products is very, very consistent. So as Peter said, with currency, there's a slight mix change. We're buying less [ fully ] from customers. But the rates that we sell currency at, that margin is very consistent. It's slightly better than it was a year ago, it's probably a slightly higher cost to deliver the currency to the stores. So that's kind of a small cost. You take pawnbroking, our rates are the same. Our interest rates are the same, we don't increase those during the year. And jewelry retail, that's had a headwind in one respect of the increased gold price for the cost of that jewelry is increasing, but we've been able to pass that on to the consumer through increased pricing and that's been really encouraging that volumes haven't been impacted by that. So the margins within the segments, again, very consistent. Admin expenses have increased 11% and again, this is very consistent with what we said in the last few years or the years. Yes, there's more stores in there that [indiscernible] as a level of cost, but by far, the biggest inflationary cost increase is people. So it's around GBP 22.7 million of lower admin expense in 2024 is people, and that's increased around GBP 2.6 million in the year. So that's a real strong increase and obviously, as we look forward, that continues to be the case during the next year in FY '25. It's going to cost around GBP 800,000 annualized. So from April '25, the national insurance costs is around GBP 800,000 we're only going to take half of that in the current year. Obviously, 2026, we'll have a full cost of that. The real living wages, which is our entry-level pay has gone up 5% from April '25. So whilst, again, that's laid on top of the national insurance cost that had been increasing faster than that. So actually, relative to recent years, that's a low increase in wage cost. But obviously, we've been able to grow the income streams to outgrow that, and we're still seeing good strong growth in our profit before tax GBP 11.4 up from GBP 10.1. The other cost in the finance cost is increasing. That's part of that cost is the IFRS 16 rental cost is actually attached to having more stores and therefore, more rent and therefore, the interest cost increases. That's around 100,000, and there are up GBP 200,000 increase in real bank borrowing interest costs. And that's a higher interest rate for the year and a slightly bigger facility from March. So we've -- we've refinanced in March to get a bigger facility. Income tax. So we've had a transitional year previously, but in the current year, the full year is a 25% cooperation tax rate and the effective rate because of the mix of add backs and the tax computation is around 27% income tax rate. So that's now a rate, which we expect to continue into the future. But that's why the income tax is it growing quicker, if you like, than the profit. And that's why EPS growth is not necessarily in line with profit before tax. But you see that be more sensible going forward in terms of the alignment. As Peter said, the pie chart in the bottom left there just gives a very, very balanced mix of those diversified income streams that really puts us in a really strong place and having those different income streams means that we can share that increase in employment costs, whilst others if you just have a foreign currency business, you then have to pass that on through our margin. Actually, because we've got that diversification, we're well positioned to be able to take that increased cost and share it across different products. On to the cash flow statement. I think this is the first year for a long time where we've not had significant working capital investment. So we've had coming out -- well, probably since COVID real reinvestment in the balance sheet for growth for inventory, in particular, so we've seen such good growth in retail in recent years, and we've continually invested in stock. We've actually been able to continue that growth, but from a flat base of inventory. And that means, obviously, that cash then falls through operating cash. And equally, the growth in the loan book, which a lot of that came in '23 and '24 is only a modest increase, again, has meant the cash falls through to operating activities. So you can see there a stark difference in FY '24 in terms of that cash generation. The CapEx, as Peter said, we've opened 7 stores. We purchased 1, we actually relocated 3 as well in the period. We actually purchased our head office. We've got a new office in Stockton to facilitate bigger capacity within our jewelry processing team, in particular, and obviously, look at the wider growth of the business. That's a leasehold property that we purchased around GBP 1 million, and that actually shows through the cash flow in the lease liability payments because it's a long resource, 995 years. The refinance happened in March. We now have at least 4 years left at a 5-year facility. It's a GBP 15 million RCF. We do have access to a GBP 5 million accordion. So we can borrow up to GBP 20 million, if we would need that. It's up slightly better terms, it's 2.15 over base. And that we've got 3 covenants which are -- were very, very strong performance against those. So it's not restricted in terms of our use of the facility. We borrowed around GBP 8.5 million at the year-end. And typically, that's not changed in terms of our seasonality and our need to use our facility through the summer. And actually, we repair a lot of that borrowing through the winter is the currency in that. So it's taken out seasonally and then put back in, in the summer. We declared a final dividend of 7.6p, and that's up from 7.1p last year and takes the total to 11.2p for the year. Again, that's going in line with EPS and it quits around 43% payout ratio, which I think longer term, we feel we will be up to 50% of our EPS outs as dividend, and that will give us opportunity to grow the dividend into the future. Into the balance sheet. Very, very consistent with what we've seen historically. I think just to remind everyone, the inventories that we buy include preowned jewelry that we actually buy below the intrinsic value. We obviously have pre-owned watches, and we have new jewelries as well within there. The trade on the receivables is the pawnbroking lending, that's asset backed again, mainly with gold jewelry and watches. And then the cash in metal and the currency in metal and the cash in the bank. So the reason we have strong cash balances and still borrowed money is the requirement of having that cash availability, particularly the currency in the stores. There's GBP 8.2 million of currency in the stores at the year-end. I mentioned the new GBP 15 million facility and the covenants are shown there in terms of the types of equipment they are. Net assets increasing to GBP 53.6 million. That's the reinvestment of the profitability into the balance sheet. And again, very, very strong access to give us the facilities we need to grow over the next few years. Look into strategy and how do we grow the business. People have seen this presentation before, will have seen this slide with slightly different photographs. So the wall on the left is [indiscernible], which was relocated to one on the right is the Bury store that we acquired, and I'm sure the lady on the phone is something that we've got from purchase to our iStock library. Into the component parts then, if we drive growth from our core estates, how do we do that? Well we've got the 4 income streams. We really want to invest in our people. Everyone has an individual development discussion every 6 months. We ensure that they're happy. We look at what we want to train them in across the 4 key services. When we have an opportunity in every single store to improve our income from each of these 4 services. So we keep pushing with the structure of operations direct 4 regional managers, 16 area managers of the stores to improve what we do on a day-in day-out basis -- also within our existing store estate is some young stores, stores that have opened over the last, if you like, 2 years, stores that we opened during the year. They might be lossmaking now, but might be profitable next year and hopefully profitable into the future thereafter. We every store that is over 3 years old is profitable and contributing to our head office costs. So we have a very, if you like, good model that we use. Relocations where, if you like, we know we're going to get a return better than the investment in -- in the store in the shop fit, et cetera. And we purposely have a flexible lease portfolio to allow us to do that. There's a slide in the appendices, where it tells you our average time to release bridge is our stores are regularly maintained, repainted, carpets, lighting, all that sort of goods make sure they still look good for customers and we represent an attractive retail environment and financial services alignment, where they can undertake what the transaction may wish to do it themselves. So that's the store estate. As I said, we have a model that is working. So why don't we have more of those stores. So 7 in the year, Grantham was opened after the year-end. Now it's been a slight -- we haven't we have the stores in the pipeline that will open. There'll be another 4, I suspect it will open in FY '25 and we have a lot of research trends, so a lot of different towns, 1 town I want a name that we've been to before, how we would look at it, had 2 shopping centers. The council has now bought 4 shopping centers. It's relocated into 1 shopping center that's going to have like a retail nucleus, and we're taking one of the last 2 stores that are free in that shopping center because everything has been condensed, when we have the two half 4 shopping centers, it was a time that was a don't know where to go or don't know which of one that should go to a different location. So quite discerning in the terms that we choose. I think the change of government slowed things down as well in that we didn't know what the government would do when they had the chance to do a budget, and we concentrate on our website, which I will come to next. But -- so we had a slight pause, but it was an intentional pause in the store estate just to say what the government may or may not do. Now we know what they have done And the impact of it, we can deal with it and move forward. On to online on a website basis. The graph on the top right-hand side is splitting our online revenue from H1 to H2 -- and we've really done that for 2024, just to show how power, restrictive, whatever we used to use for H1 is and then for how good H2 is. So let's remember that Black Friday cyber Monday. Christmas and January sales is all in H1 and yet H2 has performed so much better. We were 8% behind and 8% overall. So 16% up in the second half of the year. This is online. The online jewellery retail is also a catalog of over about 15,000 items on that website to access the catalog for our branch staff to use. We have good momentum. We're investing. We're using AI or about to use AI to describe our products and that will save us some head count and that head count we've redeployed into the processing, so we can get more items online moving forward. Currency website that went July '23, 23% growth in Click & Collect in FX '24. And as I've said, it is 12% of our total FX sales now. Pawnbroking launched November expectations to grow our customer base over the years, year one might be a neutral with the cost to acquire, but high hopes have come through from that website. And then what should launch quarter 1 in 2025. So if you like to jump that March, there is a new website aimed at Ramsdens gold buying. So what we set out to do was segregate Ramsdens for cash flow websites, our own websites. 4 websites where we could improve our SE or improve our paper collection and really develop 4 online income streams that also support our branch network. So it is an online and a high street operation. The last one, the acquisition opportunities of a nice picture of Bury there. Something will grow up. I mean it's a very small industry, the pawnbroking. It's dominated by ourselves, [ H&T ] and cash converters in terms of stores. There's a lot of people with 1 store, but the gold price is good. There's not any pawnbrokers rushing to my door at this moment in time saying good bye to their business. We had one, but it wasn't located where we wanted to be during the year, so we didn't bid for it, but we had the opportunity we've also looked at foreign currency businesses and we've also looked at Jewelers, but we have a very good store model that we can open. We have strengthened the brand and design the store, how we want it. So acquisitions have to be attractive to us against, if you like, building our own store network, which we've done successfully in the past. So that's a [ fourth ] growth strategy for us, and we do that with a strong underpinning ESG systems and very simply environmental, we want to do the right thing. So let's be good citizens, let's recycle where we can, let's turn off the lights in the rooms and we're not in all that type of activity. Socially, we want to look after our people. We've paid the re-living wages of our entry pair. We're heavily invested in staff development and 91% staff said that their branch departments are a happy place to work and they're happy at work. And we want to drive that to a 100 where possible. And then we want to do a little bit for our community. Our branch managers choose the local charities they wish to support with coin collections. But over the year, we generated GBP 46,000 to charity and we aimed to pay about more 0.5% of our quarter tax profit to charity to support a lot and a lot of good causes. Governance, while we're listed and you are, obviously, some of your investing in, considering to invest in them that brings a regulatory bar for us to adhere to, but we're also FCA authorized. So we have to make sure that we [indiscernible] to everything that happens with that were members of the QCA we follow their code of conduct. Within the board, we've had a refresh in recent years with Steve Smith retiring from the Board and Karen Ingham joining us, our Chair, Andy Min will retire in March after the AGM and Chris Muir has joined the Board, who comes with a FTSE background. So he's ex-SCS of Les and another right person joining the Board to challenge both Martin and I. So I think he will -- he's already brought some new ideas. And obviously, we will wish Andy well on he retires and thank him for all of his guidance in the 10 years. He's been my Chair. Into the summary and outlook. Look, it's been a great year. Profit is up. We've strengthened our balance sheet. We've increased the dividend. We've got a good model and a history of growing this business. We invested online and it's growing online. It's growing in stores. So we think we have a positive outlook, and we've made a good start into FY '25 and the highlights there that strong gold price continues, 40% of being quarter 1 against weaker like-for-likes, homeworking, steady, good quality growth in the loan book. Index are absolutely fine, explains are all within the norms. Jewelry retail revenue up by more than 15%, again, I suppose a bit of a weak comparison, but that is a great growth against the economic backdrop, foreign currency, like more of the sales doing well, purchases slightly back about 3% growth, again, solid growth for us. Martin has gone through increases in the employment costs, just if I say, it is not all the sunshine. There are a few showers there for us to get through. But in all, we are confident of our future in a good place. So I think we're ready to see what questions you have for us.

[Operator Instructions].

Okay. I think the first one is, if you could comment, [ Pavel ] , but the crux of the question is, will we consider buying back our shares? We've answered that in Section 172 consideration because it's been asked a couple of times. At this moment in time, we're not proposing any share buybacks. We're rewarding shareholders with a good dividend, and we think we still have opportunities to grow this business and that's where we're allocating our capital. So we keep it under watch. It's not something that we are not blind to. We understand the issues with the depressed share prices, et cetera. And like I said, we will keep that on the watch. Laurence, can we give us a sense of the assumed average gold price in the 2025 forecast? Actually don't know what the detailed forecast is that Liberal have put forward for the gold price. But I think he thinks that it will probably stay around in 9-carat terms and in sterling terms, probably about GBP 25. So probably a little bit more than where we are currently, but probably a decent average of what it has been in quarter 1. Mark has asked the company [indiscernible] net cash, which caused with regards with these much stores trades are on a single-digit PE, is now not the time to buy back shares? So I'll move on. I know our cash balances -- sorry, Steve was asked cash balances increased once again. Are there any plans to buy back shares. Let's move on. George has asked with a 41% gross in profit from a 5% increase in gold purchases, how sensitive profitability to the gold price fluctuations and what strategies are in place to mitigate this growth volatility. So we have always targeted [ looking ] like a pound profit, when we buy the gold. So depends on how much weight we're buying off the customer. It depends whether the items are retailable or not retailable determines what we will pay to the customer for the goods. And then with the weight of gold that we have bought, there's always going to be a 30%, 35% straight [indiscernible] resolve intrinsic value. And at the other end of the scale is probably about 15% to 20%. That is good retail quality that we want to refurbish and put out there for sale into our retail staff. And then there's a chunk in the middle that we have an option with if the gold price is high, we might scrap all of that. If we're needing the retail stock to grow, retail and push retail along, then we may choose to do that. So we have options, [indiscernible] with our Gold bank, the key that we need it all drives up, what's the weight of gold that we're buying, and that was up 5% in the quarter. I think with the gold price, it's probably important. When you look at the segments, obviously impacts some of data negatively. So whilst retail, for instance, if the gold price was to fall and actually is the benefit to the retail business because the cost price the input cost producers. So it's not all -- it won't all just disappear out of precious metals, there is some benefit. And generally, in the gold price producing environment, should we have the consumers feeling better and retailer and FX might actually improve as well. So it's hard to really quantify the direct impact of the gold price. Okay. Thanks, Martin. And Andrew has asked, are you seeing generally larger average transactions in the stores in the Southeast. For pawnbroking across the estate, the average is about GBP 350, it's north of GBP 500. I think it's GBP 517 in our Southern stores. So yes, the loans in the southern stores are higher. Retail, not necessarily foreign currency not necessarily average transaction values. Malcolm has asked how many new stores were proposed to open in FY '25? Well, one in Grantham is open another 4, I suspect, in the 8.5 months that we have left in FY '25. What do you expect the working capital outflow to be in FY '25? I'll let you to spoke to.

Yes. I mean, it really does depend on the growth in retail. We've seen such strong growth in Q1. I think we obviously -- that will impact how much stock we buy. But certainly, the new stores with less new stores if we do 4 new stores or 5 new stores, you're probably around GBP 1 million of investment in retail stock for that. And then you've got some -- the pawnbroking and loan book growth is only around 4% currently. So that number, again, is going to be less than GBP 1 million you would sell that store basis. So it's relatively low is that -- it would be higher, if we perform better. And I think we've got the cash to do that if trade is good.

Yes. And we have that cursor opportunities. Given pressure employment cost increases, can you grow revenues fast enough to make meaningful growth in profits? I hope so. Yes, we talked about it, Martin talked about it when he went through. We have 4 good income streams here that we take the burden of the increase of wages going up GBP 2 million annually. So we can [indiscernible] our foreign currency margin. We can increase our retail prices. Gold pricing is strong, and we've always got the fallback that we could increase our pawnbroking interest rates because I think [ elasticity ] of demand. We have the strength in that, but we want to be fair to our customers. But we want to grow the business with scale as well as slight increases in price. Mark has asked how our like-for-like profit figures and revenue. We've not disclosed that so to answer, it's not the details absolutely to hand. Can you expand on the potential benefits of the recent authorization by the FCA to international money transfers and the launch of the in-house service. Yes. So we've had a successful joint venture/partners with TorFX for about 7 years. It generated a decent income stream for the pair of us at about GBP 400 million. We -- there's no advertisement. There is conversations that happened in store. We didn't have control over the pricing. The service is very good from [ Tor ] and there was nothing wrong in that, but we got to a period in time where, if we're going to take this income stream seriously and cautious then we need to have a 100% control of it. So that's the decision that we took. We've got the authorization a couple of things to finish off before we fully launch the service. But again, you got to acquire a customer base, you're going to grow that customer base. Hopefully, we'll retain all of the customers that we pass through to [indiscernible]. And let's say, 2, 3 years, we'll be reporting on this as a meaningful income stream. Pebble has a single exceptionally expensive upon what I believe it was a recurrent loan on it now being resolved? Yes, that's resolved. It's no longer in the book. [indiscernible] asked -- should get stronger glasses, by the way, I think pull the screen nearer to me. Don't you find debit cars like Monzo and Wise impact your foreign currency sales? And is there any future in it? Is there any future in -- is that Monzo or future in Wise or our currency sales. Sales of cash is up. So Monzo has been here for quite a while. Revolut has been here for quite a while. And yet, our cash sales of currency and the profit from is up 6% in the last 12 months. And our foreign currency income, we gain is up 3% in the quarter, and we have our own card as well. So it's a competitor, and Monzo has its strengths and weaknesses as do some of the other competitors. We think we've got a good solid strong offer to offer our customers, and hopefully, we can both grow cash and card. Laurence, could you provide more detail on the operational advantages of the new head office? So we were bursting at the seams in our Middlesbrough head office, and we needed more space -- I needed more space so that I could process more jewelry and I needed more space so I could photograph more jewelry, I needed more space, so like the process watches. And to do that, I needed to move certain departments out of the building. So if you look at it across, you have accounting, compliance and risk, HR, all those type of administrative services that don't need a secured building to be in. So we have bought another building in Stockton and moved the admin center there and that's how we're managing. So it's a space issue to recruit people to process more gold that's getting handled. Rebecca says, Southern St Giles Mile your Elgin branches located in as announces due to close. What are your plans for that store and its staff going forward, please, quite a detailed question. And yes, we -- the landlord of the St Giles Center has decided to close the doors on Monday. It hasn't quite closed as yet. Someone might come in and hopefully that might get sorted because it should. That center is the hub of the town but we are in negotiations with other landlords for a relocation of that store. We will -- there will be a Ramsdens that remains in Elgin in which unit it is and when that is will be decided in the near future. In the short term, our customers will be requested to go to Inverness and our staff will be looked after because that's what we do at Ramsdens. What sort of revenues could be in-house International money transfer service bring? Again, we haven't put a number on that Laurence. I wouldn't do it, and I would've invested a year trying to get the authorization, if I didn't want it to be meaningful. So we'll report on how successful we are in the future, but it is something that would be additional, if you like, to the numbers that [ Liberum ] have.

That's great, Peter, Martin. Thank you for addressing all those questions from investors today. But before we go back to the investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important for the company. Peter, could I please ask you for a few closing comments.

There's a lot of questions there on share buybacks. We're very, very conscious of this issue with retail investors. If I was a bit blase there in answering it, there isn't attention that isn't we do think about and we'll keep it under thought. It's just not at this moment in time. And the rest of it is [indiscernible] we sit here, we know we've got a good business that's doing well, and we're looking forward to continuing to grow it and continuing to grow the network of the business, grow that balance sheet, grow the profitability and hopefully, along the way, shareholders are involving with an increased price and a dividend income stream.

Fantastic, Peter, and Martin. Thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the board could better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments complete, and I'm sure it will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Ramsdens Holdings Plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.