30th Apr 2015 07:57
LONDON (Alliance News) - International Personal Finance PLC, a lender in Europe and Mexico, Thursday said it is confident of "good progress" in 2015 as it reported lower first-quarter pretax profit due to unfavourable foreign exchange rates and business investment.
International Personal Finance, which lends money to people and visits them at home to manage repayments, said it made a GBP10.4 million pretax profit in the three months ended March 31, compared with a GBP12.7 million pretax profit in the corresponding quarter of the prior year.
The company said pretax profit fell due to new business costs of GBP2.0 million and due to GBP2.6 million related to weaker foreign exchange rates.
Its home credit business provided GBP11.3 million of the pretax profit figure, while the digital business dragged it down with a GBP0.9 million loss.
The group said it is aiming for higher levels of growth in customer numbers and credit issued in 2015, and expects the "progressive improvements" of the first quarter to continue in the rest of the year.
International Personal Finance said the roll-out of its digital business in the wake of completing the acquisition of digital consumer credit provider MCB Finance in February for GBP23.8 million is progressing.
"Our strategy to grow through geographic expansion and new product development continues and we are confident that this will allow us to deliver further good progress in 2015," the company said.
International Personal Finance shares were up 0.6% at 495.20 pence on Thursday morning.
By Samuel Agini; [email protected]; @samuelagini
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