Belvoir this morning posted results showing remarkable success on the part of its franchisees, who helped the firm achieve a 48% rise in revenue, at £9,047,000 in the first half of this year, up from £6,123,000 in the same period last year.

There was a 5% increase in management service fees, to £4,201,000

Belvoir’s financial services division did particularly well, with revenue of almost £4m, reaping the benefit of its acquisition of Mortgage Advice Bureau (Gloucester) last November.

Belvoir also reported a rise in profits, and while its network had not grown from the 300 outlets it had a year ago, there have been 16 franchisee assisted acquisitions in the year to date.

Belvoir remains highly focused on lettings with a gross profit split of 66% lettings, 15% sales, and 19% financial services.

The number of managed properties increased by 6%, to 64,650.

CEO Dorian Gonsalves said: “I am delighted to report another half year of further strategic and trading progress for the group, with our diversification into financial services building on the growth of the underlying business.

“Trading across lettings, sales and financial services continues to outperform their respective markets and deliver strong results for the group.

“The further take-up of property sales, financial services and franchisee-led acquisitions demonstrates the entrepreneurial spirit of our franchisees in the face of even more challenging market conditions.

“I am pleased to further report that Belvoir has achieved a promising start to the second half, and as such the Company is on track to meet management expectations for the full year.”

The firm had already signalled the likelihood of strong results in a trading update last month.

Belvoir has also been boosted by a report from broker finnCap which set an ambitious share price target of 190p.

Yesterday, Belvoir’s shares closed at 110p.