Good afternoon and welcome to the Ramsdens Holdings PLC full year results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press Send. 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 is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to CEO Peter Kenyon. Good afternoon to you.
Thanks, Alex. Welcome everybody. I think what we will do as we've done before, if I give a quick overview in case there's anybody new to Ramsdens. That's a picture of our new Burnley store last year. I think then we had some T's and C's in the presentation. This is us. You know, 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 pie chart between foreign currency, pawnbroking, retail jewelry, and the purchase of precious metals, which I often call gold buying because that's the primary income that we get from it. We have 169 stores as of September 24. Post that period, closed one at the Teesside Airport, so it's 168 as of today.
We're mainly located in the north of England, Scotland and Southern Wales, but 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 coming to us, and we have quite a strong Trustpilot rating there. 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 the four key income streams are all up year-over-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 dividend for those looking for income, if you like, as well as growth from their investment in Ramsdens.
Clear growth strategy, it hasn't changed since coming to the market, and it was the same prior to that. 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 branches in the year, and we've opened Grantham just after the year end. We have a pipeline of researched towns, and I'll go through where we are with that at the appropriate time. We acquired our Bury franchisee during the year, which has been a very good acquisition for us. Into the actual income streams. We start off with purchase of precious metals. Why do we start off with that one?
Well, I think you can see in the bottom right-hand part of your screen in the graph of the gold price and how since March it has really kicked on, March 2024. Obviously into quarter one this year, we have the weakness of sterling. Sterling has weakened by about 8% since the budget against the US dollar. That pushes the sterling gold price higher. Obviously we get a tailwind with this and if you like, we have some, you know, maybe excess profits of where we thought we might be. It's been, you know, we buy a weight of gold from customers, and then we have choices. If we melt it goes through this segment.
If we were to retail the gold, so refurbish it and retail it would go through the retail jewelry. This is purely about melting gold, and you can see how it has improved over the years, with an increase in gold price over the same period. Now, what comes up may come down, but at this point in time, I think everyone looking forward with the uncertainties that we have, weakness of sterling, probably in the short term, you're thinking gold will stay high. 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. What we do in this segment, 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. Taking those each in turn. The sales of foreign currency, the sales of notes has been good. You know, we're doing more transactions. We are doing it for a slightly lower amount, and we're doing it for a slightly higher margin, and that is up 6% year-on-year. Our purchases, like we said, it's a lower 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 than they have and not coming back.
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. 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. Where are we with our Ramsdens multicurrency card? It launched in September 2023. We have over 17,000 cards issued in the year. 21,000 now. It's doing really well. It gives us access to, if you like, the spend that the customer might have while they're abroad.
It will grow year on year, and obviously when we can strip out a meaningful amount of income, we will report on it separately. It is growing quite nicely. Mastercard are very happy with where we are after 12 months. To give you an idea, in December, there was about GBP 300,000 loaded onto the card, but there was also GBP 600,000 reloaded onto the card, where the customer, if you like, hasn't been into a Ramsdens branch and is spending that money abroad. That's obviously transactions and income driving for us that we had 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 gave good service, but I think with two people trying to take profit from the income stream, neither of us were really pushing, if you like, the Ramsdens international payments. We now have our own authorization. We would expect to be live offering the service in H1 this financial year, and obviously we'll report on how successful that is taking forward. One thing that I would probably just add on, click and collect and the new website. The currency website launched in July 2023, and one of the things that you can see there is the click and collect volumes are now 12% of the total of FX. We've been quite successful in attracting the customer, which is while lower margin is a higher transaction value at about GBP 650. On to pawnbroking next.
A solid year. You can see that the income is up, or the gross profit is up 16% year-on-year, but the loan book is only up 4%. The income trails the loan book growth. We have to grow the loan book, and then the interest income follows. That was happened, if you like, last year. A good growth in FY 2023, and the income follows in FY 2024. It's a very solid book. Happy with where we are with everything there. Repayment rates are still very strong. The growth in quarter one is still growing, you know, but it's about 2%-2.5% in quarter one of the current financial year. You can see the, if you like, the book building coming back out of COVID.
It was also building pre-COVID, and it was just like steady incremental growth as the store estate grew and, if you like, inflationary pressure into customers' bills, making them borrow a little bit more. We now have a new website, Ramsdens Pawnbrokers. That launched at the end of November. While we've, like, got six weeks of data, and it's encouraging data, we've been testing making sure all the system works on the new website. Customers who want to pay part payments or pay their loans off, all that functionality, we've been ensuring it's been working.
We've been soft launching the acquiring new leads for new lending, and making sure that we have the processes correct for handling those leads efficiently and effectively, and whether that is lent at distance, whether that's lent by us visiting the customer, or whether the customer goes into a store. We've been making sure all that works, the systems are good, and we're now ready to press the button on a bit of pay-per-click advertising and acquire customers. Now, obviously, the first year it might be a case of acquire the customers and what's the cost of acquiring those customers. But pawnbroking, excuse me, pawnbroking is very sticky. It's about 90% repeat customer rate. Hopefully, we're building new customers here through the website for the long term. Pawnbroking, good, solid part of our business. Then the last income stream is retail.
Retail had a bit of a mixed year. H1 was tougher. H2 was a little easier. H1, we had good growth in our second-hand jewelry, and in H2, we had good growth in our second-hand jewelry. Our value for money second-hand jewelry has done really well. In terms of premium watch sales, which is there in the chart, 38% of our retail revenue, the H1 of the year, we had a bit of downward pressure into the pricing, then it sort of leveled off at the start of 2024. 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 that maybe would fall in price. And probably at the same time, Watches of Switzerland were recording that their sales of premium watches were also increasing.
Now, the growth in premium watches carried on through H2 and has carried on into quarter one, where we've reported our revenue was up 15%. You can see that the growth in the retail revenue and the growth in retail profit has been driven off a relatively flat, slightly down jewelry retail stock. One of the things that we were doing in the H1 of the year was really concentrating on what stock do we have, how much stock do we have that's in our replenishable lines. You know, so have we got enough for, let's 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, you know, 6-7 months worth of supply and therefore I don't really need to, you know, 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 held to be retailed at a later date. We've 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 'cause that's the main thing that we concentrate on. What does that mean for profit and loss? I'll hand you on to Martin.
Thanks, Peter. As Peter said at the start, one of the most pleasing elements is that whilst revenue's up 14%, actually all of the key revenue streams are up, so foreign currency, pawnbroking, retail and precious metals. We've seen very strong growth in precious metals, and that's really been driven probably from March onwards when the gold price particularly started increasing. It increased right through to the end of the year. We've mentioned in Q1, again, that period is about 40% up on last year. That's that shows the level of growth, if you like, in H2 versus H1. That's continued. Very strong H2 for precious metals. Again, very strong H2 for retail as well. Again, that's continued into Q1 of the new year.
Very, very good. That gross profit, if you like, fall through is very strong as well. The margins within the products is very, very consistent. As Peter said, with currency, there's a slight mix change. We're buying less FX 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. There's probably a slightly higher cost to deliver the currency to the stores, but that's quite a smaller cost. You take, you know, pawnbroking, our rates are the same, our interest rates are the same. We've not increased 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. The margins within the segments, again, very consistent. Admin expenses have increased 11%. Again, this is very consistent with what we said in the last few years, really, is yes, there's more stores in there. That adds a level of cost, but by far the biggest inflationary cost increase is people. It's around GBP 22.7 million of our admin expense in 2024 is people. And that's increased around GBP 2.6 million in the year. That's a real strong increase. Obviously, as we look forward, that continues to be the case.
In the next year, in FY 2025, it's gonna cost around GBP 800,000 annualized. From April 2025, the National Insurance cost is around GBP 800,000. We're only gonna take half of that in the current year. Obviously, 2026 we'll have a full cost of that. The Real Living Wage, which is our entry level pay, is going up 5% from April 2025. Whilst again, that's layered on top of the National Insurance cost, that had been increasing faster than that. Actually, relative to recent years, that's a lower increase in wage cost. Obviously we've been able to grow the income streams to outgrow that, and we've still seen good, strong growth in our profits. Profit before tax GBP 11.4, up from GBP 10.1.
The other cost in there, finance costs is increasing. That's part of that cost is the IFRS 16 rental cost. It's actually attached to having more stores and therefore more rent and therefore the interest cost increases. That's around GBP 100,000. There's about GBP 200,000 increase in real bank borrowing interest costs. That's a higher interest rate for the year and a slightly bigger facility from March. We've refinanced in March to get a bigger facility. Income tax. We've had a transitional year previously, but in the current year, the full year's at a 25% corporation tax rate. The effective rate, because of the mix of add backs in the tax computation, is around 27% income tax rate.
That's now a rate which we expect to continue into the future. That's why the income tax has grown quicker, if you like, than the profit. That's why EPS growth is not necessarily in line with profit before tax. You see that being more sensible going forward in terms of that alignment. As Peter said, the pie chart in the bottom left there just gives a you know a very very balanced mix of those diversified income streams. That really puts us in a really strong place. You know having those different income streams means that we can share that increase in employment costs, whilst others you know if you just have a foreign currency business, you're gonna have to pass that on through your 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. Onto the cash flow statement. I think this is the first year for a long time where we've not had significant working capital investment. We've had coming out of, well, probably since COVID, real reinvestment in the balance sheet for growth, for inventory in particular. 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. That means obviously that cash then falls through operating cash. Equally, the growth in the loan book, which a lot of that came in 2023 and 2024 is only a modest increase.
That again has meant the cash falls through to operating activity. You can see there a stark difference in FY 2024 in terms of that cash generation. The CapEx, as Peter said, we've opened seven stores. We've purchased one. We actually relocated three as well in the period. And 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 the wider growth of the business. That's a leasehold property that we purchased, around GBP 1 million. That actually shows through the cash flow in the lease liability payments because it's a long leasehold, 995 years.
The refinance happened in March. We now have 4 years left of 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 at slightly better terms. It's 2.15 over base. You know, we've got 3 covenants which are, you know, we're very, very strong performance against those. It's not restrictive in terms of our use of the facility. We borrowed around GBP 8.5 million at the year-end.
Typically, you know, that's not changed in terms of our seasonality and our need to use that facility through the summer, and actually we repay a lot of that borrowing through the winter as the currency in the till is taken out seasonally and then put back in in the summer. We've declared a final dividend of GBP 0.076, and that's up from GBP 0.071 last year and takes the total to GBP 0.112 for the year. Again, that's going in line with EPS and equates to around 43% payout ratio, which, you know, I think longer term we say we'll pay up to 50% of our EPS out as dividends, and that still gives us opportunity to grow the dividend into the future. Into the balance sheet.
Very consistent with what we've seen historically. You know, I think just to remind everyone, the inventories that we buy include, you know, pre-owned jewelry that we actually buy below the intrinsic value. We obviously have pre-owned watches, and we have new jewelry as well within there. The trade on the receivables is the pawnbroking lending, so that's asset backed again mainly with gold jewelry and watches. Then the cash in the till and the currency in the till and the cash in the bank. The reason we have strong cash balances and still borrow 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.
mentioned the new GBP 15 million facility, and the covenants are shown there in terms of the types of covenant we are. Net assets increasing to GBP 53.6 million. That's the reinvestment of the profitability into the balance sheet. And again, very strong access to give us the facilities we need to grow over the next few years. Okay, into strategy, how do we grow the business. People who have seen this presentation before will have seen this slide with slightly different photographs. So the one on the left is at Cumbernauld, which is relocated, and the one on the right is the Bury store that we acquired. I'm sure the lady on the phone is something that we've got from a purchased store, iStock, library.
Into the component parts if we drive growth from our core estates, how do we do that? Well, we've got the four income streams. We really want to invest in our people. Everyone has an individual development discussion every six months. We ensure that they're happy. We look at what we want to train them in, across the four key services. We have an opportunity in every single store to improve our income from each of these four services. We keep pushing the structure of an operations director, four regional managers, 16 area managers of the stores to improve what we do on a day in, day out basis. Also within our obviously existing store estate is some young stores that we've opened over the last, if you like, two years.
Stores that we've opened during the year, you know, that might be loss-making now but might be profitable next year, and hopefully profitable into the future thereafter. Every store that is over 3 years old is profitable and contributing to our head office costs. 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 the store, in the shop fit, et cetera. 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 re-lease break is.
Our stores are regularly maintained, repainted, carpets, lighting, all that sort of goods to make sure that they still look good for our customers and we present an attractive retail environment and slash financial services environment where they can, you know, undertake whatever transaction they wish to do with ourselves. 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? Seven in the year. Grantham was opened after the year-end. Now there's been a slight, you know, we have got stores in the pipeline that will open. There'll be another four I suspect that will open in FY 2025. We have a lot of research towns or different towns.
There's one town that I won't name that we've been to before, had a good look at it, had two shopping centers. The council has now bought both shopping centers. It's relocated into one shopping center that's gonna have a retail nucleus, and we're safely one of the last two stores that are free in that shopping center because everything has been condensed. When we had the two half full shopping centers, it was a town that was a, "Don't know where to go. Don't know which one to back, so we'll go to a different location." Quite discerning in the towns 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.
We concentrated on our websites, which I'll come to next. We had a slight pause, but it was an intentional pause in the store estate just to see 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. Onto online. On a website basis, the graph in the top right-hand side is splitting our online revenue from H1 - H2. We've really done that for 2024 just to show how poor, restrictive, whatever word you wish to use for H1 is, and then for how good H2 is. You know, 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 60% up in the H2 of the year. This is online. Online jewelry retail is also a catalog. There are about 15,000 items on that website, so it acts as a 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 headcount. That headcount will be redeployed into the processing so we can get more items online moving forward. Currency website that went July 2023. 23% growth in click and collect in FX 2024. As I've said, it is 12% of our total FX sales now. Pawnbroking launched November. Expectation was to grow our customer base over the years.
Year one might be, if you like, neutral with the cost to acquire, but high hopes are coming from that website. What should launch quarter 1 in 2025, if you like, you know, January, February, March, is a new website aimed at Ramsdens gold buying. What we set out to do was segregate Ramsdens For Cash into 4 websites or one website into 4 websites where we could improve our SEO, improve our pay-per-click, and really develop 4 online income streams that also support our branch network. It is an online and a high street operation. The last one, the acquisition opportunities. We have a nice picture of Bury there. Something will come up. I mean, it's a very small industry, the pawnbroking industry.
It's dominated by ourselves, H&T, and Cash Converters in terms of stores. There's a lot of people with one store, but the gold price is good. There's not many pawnbrokers rushing to my door at this moment in time saying will I buy their business. We had one, but it wasn't located where we want it 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. We have a very good store model that we can open. We have strength in the brand. We can design the store how we want it. Acquisitions have to be attractive to us, against, if you like, building our own store network, which we've done successfully in the past.
That's in fact the four growth strategies for us. We do that with a strong underpinning ESG systems and very simply environmental, we want to do the right thing. You know, let's be good citizens. Let's recycle where we can. Let's turn off the lights in the rooms that we're not in. All that type of activity. Socially, we want to look after our people. We pay the Real Living Wage as our entry pay. We're heavily invested in staff development, and 91% of staff say that their branch or department is a happy place to work, and they're happy at work. We want to drive that to 100 where possible. We're, you know, we wanna do a little bit for our community.
Our branch managers choose the local charities they wish to support with coin collections. Over the year, we've donated GBP 46,000 to charity, and we aim to pay about 0.5% of our post-tax profit to charity to support a lot of good causes. Governance. While we're AIM listed, and you're obviously, some of you are investing in, some of you considering to invest in, that brings a regulatory bar for us to adhere to. We're also FCA authorized, so we have to make sure that we adhere to everything that happens with that. We're members of the QCA. We follow their code of conduct. Within the board, we've had a refresh in recent years with Stephen Smith retiring from the board and Karen Ingham joining us.
Our chair, Andrew Meehan, will retire in March after the AGM. Chris Mayfield has joined the board, who comes with a FTSE background, so he's ex-FCIS of late. Another, you know, bright person joining the board to challenge both Martin and I. I think he will. He's already brought some new ideas. Obviously, we will wish Andy well once he retires, and thank him for all his invaluable 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 dividends. We've got a good model and a history of growing this business. We've invested online, and it's growing online. It's growing in stores.
We think we have a positive outlook, and we've made a good start into FY 2025. The highlights are there, that is, strong gold price continues 40% up in quarter one against, you know, weaker like-for-likes, pawnbroking, steady, good quality growth in the loan book. End dates are absolutely fine. Expiry dates 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, if you like, more of the sales doing well, purchases slightly back, but 3% growth. Again, solid growth for us. Martin's gone through the increases in the employment costs.
Just to say it is not all sunshine and there are a few showers there too for us to get through. In all, we are confident of our future in a good place. I think, you know, we're ready to see what questions you have for us.
Perfect. Peter, Martin, thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Peter, Martin, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. If I may now hand back to you and kindly ask you to re-read out the questions where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you both at the end.
Okay. I think the first one is, you know, thank you for your kind comments, Pavel. But the crux of the question is will we consider buying back our shares? We've answered that in our 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. 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 we've said we'll keep that under watch.
Lawrence, "Can we give us a sense of the assumed average gold price in the 2025 forecasts?" I actually don't know what the detailed forecast is that Liberum have put forward for the gold price, but I think he thinks that it will probably stay around in 9 karat terms and in sterling terms, probably about GBP 25. Probably a little bit lower than where we are currently, but probably a decent average of what it has been in quarter one. Mark has asked, "The company is looking at net cash, is cautious with regards to additional stores. Trade is on a single digit PE. Is now not the time to buy back shares?" I'll move on. Now, another one. I know our cash balances.
Sorry.
Stephen's asked, "Cash balances increased once again. Are there any plans to buy back shares?" Let's move on. George has asked, "With a 40% growth in profit from a 5% increase in gold purchases, how sensitive is profitability to the gold price fluctuations, and what strategies are in place to mitigate this volatility?" We have always targeted, if you like, a GBP 1 profit when we buy the gold. Depends how much weight we're buying off the customer, 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 our 30%-35% which will go straight through and be sold for its intrinsic value.
At the other end of the scale, there's probably about 15%-20% that is good retail quality that we want to refurbish and put out there for sale into our retail stock. 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. We have options, if you like, with our gold buying, but the key that we need, it all drives off 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 it impacts some of the others negatively. While retail, for instance, if the gold price was to fall, it actually is a benefit to the retail business 'cause the cost price, the input cost reduces. It's not all, you know, it won't all just disappear out of precious metals. There is some benefit. Generally in a gold price reducing environment, typically the consumer's feeling better and retail and FX might actually improve as well. It's hard to really quantify the direct impact of the gold price.
Okay, thanks, Martin. 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. Yes, the loans in the southern stores are higher. Retail, not necessarily. Foreign currency, not necessarily affecting average transaction values. Malcolm has asked, "How many new stores do you propose to open in FY 2025?" Well, one in Grantham is open. Another four, I suspect, in the eight and a half months that we have left in FY 2025. "What do you expect working capital outflow to be in FY 2025?" I'll let you respond to.
Yeah. I mean, it really does depend on the growth in retail. We've seen such strong growth in Q1. I think that will impact how much stock we buy. 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
In retail stock for that. Then you've got, you know, some, you know, the pawnbroking loan book growth is only around 4% currently. That number again is gonna be less than GBP 1 million you'd sell on that sort of basis. It's relatively low, is that. It would be higher if we perform better, and I think, you know, we've got the cash to do that if trade is good. Yeah, we have that host of opportunities. Given pressure on employment cost increases, can you grow revenues fast enough to make meaningful growth in profits? I hope so. Yeah, Look, we talked about it. Martin talked about it when he went through.
We have four good income streams here that can take the burden of the increase of wages going up GBP 2 million annually. You know, we can leverage foreign currency margin, we can increase our retail prices, gold pricing is strong, and we've always got the fallback that we can increase our pawnbroking interest rates because I think it's quite elastic in demand. We have the strength in that but, you know, 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 are like-for-like profit figures and revenue. We've not disclosed that, so, can't answer it, don't have the details absolutely to hand.
Can you expand on the potential benefits of the recent authorization by the FCA to make international money transfers and the launch of the in-house service? Yeah, we've had a successful joint venture/partnership with TorFX for about seven years. It generated a decent income stream for the pair of us at about GBP 0.5 Million . You know, there's no advertisement. There was conversations that happened in store. We didn't have control over the pricing. The service was very good from Tor, and, you know, there was nothing wrong in that. We got to a period in time where if we're going to take this income stream seriously and push it, then we need to have 100% control of it. That's the decision that we took. We got the authorization.
We've got a couple things to finish off before we fully launch the service. You know, again, you've got to acquire a customer base, you've got to grow that customer base. Hopefully, we'll retain all of the customers that we pass through to Tor. You know, let's say two, three years we'll be reporting on this as a meaningful income stream. Pavel, has the single exceptionally expensive pawned watch, I believe it was, and recurrent loan on it now been resolved? Yes, that's resolved. It's no longer in the book. Rosie's asked. Should get stronger glasses, by the way. I think I'll pull the screen nearer to me. Don't you find debit cards like Monzo and Wise impact your foreign currency sales, and is there any future in it?
Is there any future in Monzo or Wise or our currency sales? Hey, look, cash sales is up. Monzo's been here for quite a while. Revolut's been here for quite a while. Yet our cash sales of currency and the profit from it is up 6% in the last 12 months. Our foreign currency income again is up 3% in the quarter, and we have our own card as well. 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 the card. Lawrence, could you provide more detail on the operational advantages of the new head office?
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. I needed more space so I could photograph more jewelry. I needed more space so that I could process watches. To do that, I needed to move certain departments out of the building. If I, you know, you look at it across, you had accounts, compliance and risk, HR, all those type of administrative services that don't need a secured building to be in. We have bought another building in Stockton and moved the admin center there, and that's how we're managing. It's a space issue to recruit people to process more gold, that's getting handled. Rebecca says, St Giles Centre.
Giles Centre, your Elgin branch is located in, has announced it's due to close. What are your plans for that store and its staff going forward, please? Quite a detailed question. The landlord of the St Giles Centre 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 'cause it should. That center is the hub of the town. We are in negotiations with other landlords for a relocation of that store. 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.
Our staff will be looked after because that's what we do at Ramsdens. What sort of revenues could the in-house international money transfer service bring? Again, we haven't put a number on that, Lawrence. I wouldn't do it, and I wouldn't have 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. 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. Before we direct investors to provide you with their feedback, which you know is particularly important for the company, Peter, could I please ask you for a few closing comments?
Hey, look, 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 blasé in answering it, you know, there isn't an intention there. This is something we do think about, and we'll keep it under thought. It's just not at this moment in time. The rest of it is look, we, you know, 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, if like, grow the net worth of the business, grow that balance sheet, grow the profitability, and hopefully, you know, along the way, shareholders will be rewarded with an increased price and a dividend income stream.
Fantastic. Peter, 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 can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure 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.