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PLUS-quoted equipment leasing specialist St Helen’s Finance is growing fast and looking for acquisitions.
Turnover at the concern, which finances ‘core assets’ for smaller companies and is not to be confused with either AIM-listed adviser St Helen’s Capital or PLUS-quoted St Helen’s Private Equity, is understood to have reached some £330,000 in the first quarter of this year, close to half the £760,000 recorded for the whole of 2007. It nearly doubled losses last year to £312,000 after bad debt write-offs of £126,400 and bad and doubtful debt provisions of £168,000.
But St Helen’s is winning new business as banks harden terms in this sector, says managing director Norman Kenvyn. He says the company hopes to build its ‘venture financing’ side, which takes an element of equity in lessee businesses along the lines of ‘mezzanine’ debt funding, and is looking at possible takeover targets.
Kenvyn, a veteran of the Lombard leasing group, says St Helen’s – which increased its own debt finance 151 per cent last year to £5.6m to support growth and fund its, typically, 36-month leases – does not go to the big banks for this, but to companies such as Hitachi, Close Brothers, ING and Singer & Friedlander. The company, most of whose business has so far come through brokers, does not specialise in particular sectors, but, says Kenvyn, it does shun those, such as retailing, where too many lessors are chasing the business.
Floated on PLUS five years ago at 11p, the shares have fluctuated in the past 12 months between 9.25p and 13.25p. If the present strategy pays off and St Helen’s can grab profitable market share because of the credit crunch, without unduly increasing its own risk, they should make progress. Highly speculative, however.
