Office space rental firm Regus said today that its profits rose 25 per cent last year as more companies rented out its space rather than buying new premises. Regus is one of the few real estate firms to buck the market gloom, thanks to new cost-saving services it has started offering cash-strapped clients.

The company reported a pre-tax profit £149.2 million, up from £119.4 million a year earlier. Its revenues also rose 25 per cent to £1.08 billion. It increased its dividend to 1.8 pence per share, up from 1p last year.

Regus said average occupancy of its workplaces increased as firms looked to reduce their office costs and rent space during the recession. "2008 was another successful year for Regus delivering a fifth consecutive year of record performance," said chief executive officer Mark Dixon.

The company said in a statement that it opened 112 new centres in 2008, and increased the number of available workstations to 153,260. Revenues increased 6.7 per cent to £222m in the UK, where it has 131 work centres.

In Asia, revenues rose 55.7 per cent to £121 million as it continued to open new centres in places like Pakistan and Taiwan. Dixon said the company was attracting new customers who are "looking to reduce their office costs and gain flexibility in an increasingly challenging marketplace".

Regus, which offers ready-to-use offices for rental periods that are as short as half a day, has introduced even cheaper options. "Our newly introduced portfolio of recession-busting products is attracting many new customers who are looking to reduce their office costs and gain flexibility in an increasingly challenging marketplace," Dixon said.

Among the products the firm has introduced is the "Business World" prepaid card – which it compares to the Oyster card sold by Transport for London – using which clients can swipe in or out of any of its 950 office centres globally.

The company, which rents the office space it provides its customers, is also seeing a rise in demand for the video-conferencing services it offers, as companies seek to cut travel costs.

Regus has nevertheless focused on cutting costs as it also reacts to the economic downturn, and is on track to achieve £75m of cost savings this year. The company, which operates in Europe, Asia and the US, said it had seen a slowdown in some of its markets in the last two months of 2008.

"It's going to be a tough year," Dixon said. "We will make less money this year than last year." He added, however, that he is comfortable with market forecasts for the company's performance.