Excluding exceptional items, De La Rue recorded a 56% year-on-year rise in operating profit, to £63.1m (2011: £40.4m), for the twelve months to 31 March 2012.

Turnover was up 14% at £528.3m (2011: £463.9m), while underlying pre-tax profit rost 73% to £57.7m (2011: £33.3m) as De La Rue put its well-publicised paper production problems behind it.

Outgoing chairman Nicholas Brookes, who will retire on 26 July, said: "I am pleased to report that De La Rue has made excellent progress in the past financial year, achieving strong growth in revenue and profit.

"As I leave De La Rue, I am confident that, with a strong management team and a clear plan for improvement, the business is well placed for the future."

Such has been the progress of the company's Improvement Plan, which is targeting an operating profit in excess of £100m by 2014, that it has already declared itself on track to meet its goal.

Paul Jones, an analyst with Panmure Gordon, said: "They're quite a bit ahead of where I expected them to be and there are some signs of optimism, which we haven't been able to say about De La Rue for some time.

"For them to post an operating profit of over £60m and say that they're very confident of achieving full payback on the three year plan is a fairly big statement of intent. It shows the workforce is clearly buying into what is a very realistic strategy to consistently achieve an operating profit in excess of £100m."

Jones added that the paper production issues that had hung over De La Rue since they were announced in 2010 were now a thing of the past. "The issues are largely over both from a client perspective and from a city point of view," he said.

De La Rue's share price dropped slightly on publication of its preliminary results; however, Jones said this was because the company had already benefitted significantly from speculation about a possible Greek exit from the Euro.

"On a one month view the share price is probabaly about right, but on a three to six-month view the price still represents good value," he concluded.

Partner at Moorgate Capital, Nicholas Mockett, said: "It was a good set of results from a venerable British company.

"If the Eurozone turmoil leads to a new drachma De la Rue would be in a good strong position to produce it, but it does have plenty of competition in this market, such as Germany’s Bundesdruckerei or Orell Fussli in Switzerland. 

"De La Rue seems to have recovered from the Indian fiasco, which spurred on the unsuccessful French suitor Oberthur last year, and restored the all important trust. This reflects in its share price which is roughly double what it was 10 years ago, and although some way below its peak of 2008, this is a solid business but not an exceptionally high growth one."

Mockett added that even it didn’t print new drachma, peseta, escudos, or punts its markets, such as secure documents, would continue to grow as Governments introduced new ID technology and the emerging markets saw surging demand for foreign travel."