Group Lease Public Company Limited reports net profit of 55.05 million baht

18 Aug 2020

Group Lease Public Company Limited reported 2Q2020 net profit of 55.05 million baht. The Company will continue its smart growth strategy as core business operations remain profitable

Mr. Alain Dufes, Chief Financial Officer of Group Lease Public Company Limited, revealed “the Company recorded profit of 55.05 million baht in 2Q2020 as we reduced operating and financing costs by more than 75 million baht compared to 2Q2019. Unfortunately, we still had 21 million baht in legal expenses, but this is a decline compared to last year and last quarter. The largest issue for this quarter was Covid-19 and the lockdowns that occurred in Thailand and across the world. The situation also impacted our ability to generate new sales during the quarter as the lockdown and reduced business activity resulted in a sharp decline in April sales, which have since overall mostly recovered. April was also the toughest month for us in terms of collecting payment, however we collected much better than we expected and collection has been improving since April. Overall during this quarter, collection was much better than anticipated. In Thailand, we have approved nearly 10,000 interest moratoriums as we try to help our customers during this time.

Outside Thailand, we continue to focus on microfinance lending in Myanmar which was flat during this time—though income from group loans is up 3% compared to last year mostly due to foreign exchange. While we have come to expect high growth in Myanmar, they did have a long lockdown due to the virus which reduced our ability to meet new customers. We expect growth to soon resume to our normal high levels.

While some factors are out of our control, our more efficient business operations are improving business performance and resulting in a profitable GL even during this period.

Mr. Tatsuya Konoshita, Chief Executive Officer of Group Lease Public Company Limited, stated, “thankfully we spent the last few years becoming more efficient and only just before Covid-19 did we restart growth. While Covid-19 delayed our growth this quarter, now that we understand the situation better, we are looking forward to restarting smart growth again and taking advantage of the large amount of cash we have—more than 3.1 billion baht.

One of the ways we began our efficient, smart growth was by offering “Service at Home” to our Motor for Cash and Car for Cash customers. Instead of having customers come to our branch, our team would go to their home, inspect the vehicle, and complete all tasks there. This was launched in the second half of last year and has continued to be popular as many customers prefer to do business at their home. Thanks to initiatives such as this, we disbursed more Motor for Cash product in June this year than we did in June last year. It really shows what a terrific job our team has been doing.

We had a profitable quarter and look forward to delivering many more for our shareholders.”