Welcome to Credit Corp 2025 Full-Year Results Presentation. I'm Thomas Beregi, the CEO of Credit Corp. Our objective is to lead in the credit-impaired consumer segment. We work with consumers who've had trouble with credit, most having defaulted on a previous obligation. To succeed, we aim to stay ahead in three key areas. We operate at the risky end of the consumer credit spectrum, which requires well-developed analytics and the discipline to apply those objectively. Our customers require specialized approaches, which creates complexity and demands strong operations. We're more likely to encounter people in hardship or suffering from a vulnerability, so we have to be very responsible and compliant to deliver on our promise to our debt sale clients, other stakeholders, and the community.
Applying these competencies, we target to deliver strong earnings growth into the future while producing acceptable returns, a return on equity of 16% with a conservative financial structure. We have great metrics and approaches for each of these competencies across our three businesses. Our focus has delivered a solid recovery in 2025. The impact of the contraction in the size of the Australia and New Zealand debt buying market, which has made it hard for us to grow our earnings over recent years, has largely run its course, and increased earnings from other businesses are now bridging the gap. The lending segment accounted for much of our growth in 2025, and there was a solid improvement from our U.S. debt buying operation. All of that produced underlying earnings growth of 16% to a net profit after tax of $94.1 million.
All of our businesses are on a positive footing for the year ahead as we maintain our emphasis on improving operations and buying well in the U.S., refreshing our marketing and expanding through newer products in lending, and being efficient in our Australia and New Zealand debt buying and collection services businesses. A lot of our attention has been applied to our U.S. operation, and that resulted in a sustained uplift in labor productivity of 28% in that market, and it also produced solid collections growth of 12% over the prior year. As results improved, we became more confident and stepped up our buying in the U.S., doubling our rate of purchasing over the second half of the year, and we bought well, concentrating on lower balance credit cards delivering a faster payback while also balancing our outlay across more sellers.
We ended the year with a record pipeline of committed purchasing in the U.S., totaling $164 million. In consumer lending, we refreshed our marketing in response to weakened new customer demand. This delivered loan book growth to maintain segment earnings in the year ahead after a very strong result in 2025. Late in the year, we achieved some important milestones towards sustaining growth from the lending segment. The exciting Wizard digital credit card was released from Pilot. This unique product is the only fully functioning card offering for credit-impaired consumers, and it will grow more rapidly from here. We also executed an agreement to acquire a small license shell to accelerate our entry into the U.K. lending market. Excess consumer demand in our segment of the U.K. market makes this a great time to get started and grow a sizable business in favorable conditions.
Pending regulatory approval, we expect to close the transaction and commence lending by December. We have the balance sheet to deliver on our growth agenda while maintaining the flexibility to seize opportunities as they arise. Our gearing level remains as one of the lowest in the world for our industry at less than 30% of the carrying value of our financial assets, and we have $150 million in undrawn borrowing capacity. I'll just conclude with our guidance for 2026. Purchased debt ledger investment is expected to grow by around 27% on the back of a strong starting pipeline in the U.S. Consumer lending volumes will approximate those of the year just gone, and we're expecting net profit after tax in the range of $100 million- $110 million, which represents growth at the midpoint of the guidance range at around 12%.
Thanks for your attention today, and there will be updates on our progress throughout the year, with the next one scheduled for the 28th of October at the company's annual general meeting.