“We don’t see this having any impact on our business at all,” Finance Director Julian Steadman said.

“Whenever travel plans have to change, that creates work for us, and this inevitably means that we create some additional revenues from that.”

Two German airports halted flights on Wednesday after ash from an Icelandic volcano drifted south into European air routes.

Steadman’s comments came as the British company predicted 10 percent operating profit growth this year thanks to a rebound in demand for business travel and posted slightly better than expected results, helping send its shares up as much as 7 percent.

“We are comfortable with the numbers in the market ... They are generally looking at about a 5 percent increase in revenue, with nearly two times that in terms of operating profit increase,” Steadman said in a telephone interview.

Hogg Robinson, which was established in 1845 and whose customers include Britain’s Ministry of Defense and German carmaker Volkswagen, also raised its final dividend 25 percent.

“The macro numbers clearly show that we are back pretty much at the levels of the pre-recession, and for airline passengers slightly ahead,” Steadman said.

International air freight and passenger traffic picked up in January, but political unrest in the Middle East and Africa and natural disasters in Japan could make 2011 a challenging year for many travel firms, according to airline body IATA.

The company, headquartered in Basingstoke in the southeast of England, posted a 16 percent rise in full-year underlying pretax profit to 32.9 million pounds ($53.4 million) on revenue of 358 million pounds, up 10 percent.

Client travel transaction activity was up 17 percent in the year to the end of March, while travel spend grew 23 percent.

Analysts had on average expected a pretax profit of 32.2 million pounds, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Steadman also said the company, which cut its net debt 20 percent to 61.1 million pounds at the year end, was looking at small acquisitions in its core travel business.

“We have some fire power within our existing debt facilities to help us through that ... but more in the market for small bolt ons,” Steadman added.

Hogg Robinson shares, which have nearly doubled in value over the past year, were up 3.9 percent at 60.25 pence at 1011 GMT on the London Stock Exchange, having earlier risen as much as 7 percent to 62 pence.

Analysts at house broker Collins Stewart, which has a ‘buy’ rating and a 73 pence price target on the stock, said they had raised their forecast for pretax profit in the coming year by 4 percent to 35.4 million pounds.

“We now expect the corporate travel management market to show more normalized levels of growth driven by outsourcing,” they wrote in a research note. “The four global players have only 18 percent of the market, offering scope to gain share as clients look to consolidate their travel management providers.”