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(Sharecast News) - Saga shares sparked on Thursday as the specialist in products for the over-50s said full-year profit was set to be ahead of guidance following a strong performance in the travel division.
In an update on trading from 1 August 2025 to 28 January 2026, the company said it now expects to report underlying pre-tax profit ahead of the prior year, and ahead of the guidance given at the half year. Meanwhile, trading EBITDA is still expected to be ahead of 2024/25.
Chief executive Mike Hazell hailed a particularly solid performance in the travel segment. He said demand for the company's Ocean and River Cruises continued to grow and there was a material increase in the number of customers taking its hotel and touring holidays.
Trading in the insurance broking business was also strong and ahead of expectations.
"Alongside this, we have made significant strategic progress," said Hazell. "We have simplified our travel business under one management team, creating a single, more efficient and customer centric operation. At the same time, we successfully completed the sale of our insurance underwriting business and launched partnerships with Ageas in Insurance Broking and NatWest Boxed in Money.
"As we look ahead, we expect the momentum to continue to build in our cruise and holidays businesses, while in insurance broking we expect underlying profit before tax to be in line with previous guidance.
"We continue to make progress against our longer term plans and are currently ahead of our expected trajectory. We remain confident of delivering underlying profitability of at least 100.0m, and leverage below 2.0x by January 2030."
At 0915 GMT, the shares were up 13% at 492p.
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