Bangkok--28 Nov--Master Mind Communications
After posting substantial gains in the third quarter, SET-listed motorcycle leasing firm Group Lease Public Company Limited (GL) expects further improvement in its financial performance in the last quarter this year — thanks to continuous robust growth in monthly sales and declining non-performing loans (NPLs).
Without giving any precise projection, GL chairman and chief executive officer Mitsuji Konoshita stated today (Nov 28) that he is “happy” with the way business has been progressing and expected further improvement in profits in the current quarter.
GL reported a 106 million baht net profit in the third quarter ending September, which represents a 17% increase from the second quarter this year but a whopping 70% growth from the corresponding period last year. Total profits for the first nine months this year stood at 250 million baht.
Riding on the back of Thailand’s economic recovery this year, GL’s strong growth momentum has been driven by steady sales increases averaging 3.5-4 per cent monthly. At the same time, the company has also become more efficient in managing its portfolio, reducing NPLs to about 4.6-4.7% now which compares favorably with the industry average of about 7%.
While Thailand has been its main operation base from the start, GL is now also launching a major expansion drive into Cambodia as the first leg of an ambitious program to tap the regional market potentials that will open up as the result of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) which is due to come into being in 2015.
GL is placing high hopes on the Cambodian market due to its enormous growth potentials. The company’s wholly-owned subsidiary GL Finance (GLF) has become the first to be granted license by the Cambodian national bank to operate leasing business. GLF has also received exclusive rights to provide financing services to the customers of all HONDA dealerships in Cambodia. This has given a clear advantage to GLF since HONDA is the leading brand commanding about 95% share of the Cambodian motorcycles market.
The company has set its corporate vision to become a leading ASEAN regional finance company by targeting to aggressively grow its aggregate motorcycles portfolio to one million units by 2015 when the AEC comes into being.
The aggregate target comprises of two portions — the first half will come from GL’s own operations in Thailand (200,000 units) and Cambodia (300,000 units) while the other half will be added from GL’s planned takeovers of similar or larger finance firms engaged in the same leasing business in Vietnam and Indonesia.