Ramsdens PLC
Riding the Tailwinds of Gold and Recovery Continues as Expected
By Financial Journalist: Elric Langton | 3 June 2026
Ramsdens’ interim statement is not so much a trading update as a profit warning in reverse. The Company has reported a record first half, with revenue up 62% to £83.7m, gross profit up 48% to £40.1m and pre-tax profit up 173% to £16.7m, already ahead of the £16.2m achieved in the whole of FY25.
For our coverage, the pleasing part is that the original pandemic-era feature and the subsequent decision to stay with the story rather than wander off in search of shinier disasters have been vindicated by all-time-high share prices. Readers who trusted the original thesis and remained as committed as we have been would have seen the shares rise from 157p to 485p as I pound the keyboard. That is a gain of about 209%, or just over three bags the original price, not forgetting the dividend yields, which brings the total appreciation to roughly 225%. Not bad for a Company many investors once lazily filed under “old economy high street”, the equity market’s equivalent of putting something useful in the attic and forgetting where it is.
Hat tip to Mike Cain for his original nudge; it was he who saw the potential first, which prompted the feature.
The material point is the new FY26 guidance. Management now expects pre-tax profit of £30m to £33m, versus prior consensus of £28.6m. That implies an upgrade of roughly 5% at the bottom of the range, 10% at the midpoint and 15% at the top. In small-cap terms, that is clearly material, particularly because the first-half result already covers more than half the upgraded full-year range. The market is not being asked to believe in a heroic second half; it is being asked whether Ramsdens can merely avoid dropping the gold bar on its own toesies.
The chief driver remains the extraordinary performance in precious metals, where gross profit rose 130% to £17.5m, helped by sustained elevated gold prices and higher volumes. This is the obvious caveat. Gold buying is highly profitable in the current environment, but it is not a smooth annuity stream. Management acknowledges the risk, noting volatility in gold prices amid an uncertain geopolitical and economic backdrop. Investors should therefore resist the temptation to capitalise every ounce of this exceptional performance at a permanent multiple. Gold will eventually grapple with gravity, which is normal.
That said, the upgrade is not a one-trick bullion show (I know, I hate puns). Jewellery retail revenue rose 26%, and gross profit rose 31%, while pawnbroking gross profit rose 18%, driven by a growing loan book and disciplined lending. Those two divisions matter because they make the earnings story more durable than a simple punt on the gold price. Ramsdens is increasingly looking like a diversified high-street financial services and value retail platform, rather than merely a pawnbroker with a favourable macro wind behind it.
The weaker spot is foreign currency, where gross profit fell 9% to £4.6m despite stable volumes, as more customers shifted to lower-margin digital services. Management’s response is credible: the Ramsdens multi-currency card now has around 50,000 cards in issue, double the prior-year figure, giving the group some protection as travel money migrates from cash to card. Still, FX is no longer the easy post-pandemic rebound trade it once was.
The balance sheet and capital return also support the investment case. Net assets rose to £70.2m, and the interim ordinary dividend has been lifted 33% to 6p, with a further 3p special dividend on top. A 9p total interim distribution is not management whispering confidence; it is shouting it from the shopfront.
The judgement, then, is straightforward. This is a genuinely material upgrade, underpinned by exceptional gold profits but strengthened by evidence of growth across jewellery, pawnbroking, store expansion and digital customer acquisition. The shares have already done a great deal, so the debate now shifts from recovery to valuation and earnings sustainability. Ramsdens has earned the higher rating; the only question is how much of today’s golden weather investors should assume will still be shining tomorrow.
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Takeover has arrived 609p to include dividends. Nice one.