Saga said it was on course to achieve its fourth consecutive year of growth despite profits being squeezed by cost pressures.
The over-50s insurer and holiday firm saw pre-tax profits fall 6.3% to £103 million for the six months ending in July, as it took a hit from a "successful refinancing and net fair value losses on derivatives".
While revenues dropped £1.8 million to £435.4 million over the period, underlying pre-tax profits rose 5.5% to £110.2 million thanks to a 10.4% hike in its retail broking and travel business.
The group said it was enjoying bumper pre-sales for its cruise ship Spirit of Discovery, with travel profit growing 63% to £11.9 million.
It came as the company also hiked its interim dividend by 11.1% to 3p.
Group chief executive Lance Batchelor said: "Saga is on track to deliver a fourth consecutive year of growth.
"Underlying profits are up again and so is our dividend. Our retail broking and travel divisions are performing well. Saga's new ship, Spirit of Discovery, will arrive in June 2019, and pre-sales are very strong.
"Our confidence in demand has supported our decision to purchase our second new ship, Spirit of Adventure, and to bring forward delivery to August 2020.
"I believe that these results continue to demonstrate that Saga is growing, has good momentum, and is on track to deliver in line with expectations for the full year."
Focusing on the insurance business, total revenues dropped 10.3% to £192.8 million, but retail broking profits climbed 4.7% to £70.9 million following a robust performance from motor broking.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here