TIDMMCL
RNS Number : 2438L
Morses Club PLC
09 September 2021
9 September 2021
Morses Club PLC
Trading Update
Morses Club PLC ("Morses Club", the "Company" or, together with
its subsidiary undertakings, the "Group"), an established provider
of non-standard financial services, provides the following update
on trading for the 26-week period ending 28 August 2021.
Trading
Morses Club performed strongly during the period and has traded
in line with market expectations. The Group's offering has
continued to evolve over the first half of the year to meet
changing customer needs as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and
the Company's strategy to become a more complete provider of
non-standard financial products and services continues apace.
Digital
In the Digital lending division, customer numbers for both
short-term and long-term lending have increased and stood at over
46,000 at the end of the period, an increase of 100% since the end
of FY21. The gross loan book was GBP35.7m, an increase of 194%
against the year-end. Against the same period for 2021, credit
issued has increased by 271%, from GBP9.1m (H1 FY21) to GBP24.7m
(H1 FY22). The quality of the lending in the digital division
remains high, with collections performance in line with
management's budgeted plan. As previously reported, the Group
expects the impairment range for Digital to increase during the
period, due to the IFRS9 requirement to take forward-looking
provisions at the outset of the loan period.
Home Collected Credit
The Home Collected Credit division performed in line with
expectations, with customer numbers at over 143,000 at the end of
the period. Morses Club continues to focus on the quality of its
lending. Total credit issued during H1 FY22 was GBP53.1m, 17% above
management's budgeted plan and 4% higher than the equivalent period
in H1 FY21 (GBP51.2m), despite tightening credit policy to further
enhance the quality of our lending. The gross loan book was
GBP95.8m (FY21 GBP80.5m). The Group continues to adapt to a
structurally changing HCC sector where, despite the removal of
Government restrictions, the Group's digital HCC offering remains
very popular; 65% of all lending is now cashless, while 86% of
payments are cashless. Over 75% of customers are signed up for the
customer portal. Cash collection performance in the HCC division
has remained consistent and is ahead of management's budgeted plan.
Impairment for the first half of the year is expected to be within
the Company's guidance range. Customer satisfaction remains high at
98% for the HCC division.
Notice of Interim Results
Morses Club will be announcing its interim results for the
26-week period ending 28 August 2021 on Thursday 7 October
2021.
Paul Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Morses Club, said:
"I am pleased by the progress the Group has made over the first
half of the year. We have seen strong demand for our products as
the market has re-opened and with the ongoing economic recovery we
expect this to continue.
"Our long-term strategy to evolve into a more complete provider
of non-standard financial services products and the reduced
competition in the HCC and Digital sectors is likely to be to our
benefit. I look forward to the future with confidence as we
continue to provide our customers with products and services to
support their financial needs."
For further information please contact:
Morses Club PLC Tel: +44 (0) 330
Paul Smith, Chief Executive Officer 045 0719
Graeme Campbell, Chief Financial Officer
Peel Hunt (Nomad) Tel: +44 (0) 20 7418
Andrew Buchanan / Rishi Shah / Duncan Littlejohns 8900
/ Jasmine Kanish (Investment Banking Division)
Camarco Tel: +44 (0) 20 3757
Jennifer Renwick / Jake Thomas 4994
Notes to Editors
About Morses Club
Morses Club is an established provider of non-standard financial
services in the UK. The Group consists of Morses Club, the UK's
second largest home collected credit ("HCC") provider, and Shelby
Finance Limited, Morses Club's Digital division, which operates
under two online brands, Dot Dot Loans, an online lending provider,
and U Account, which offers online e-money current accounts. The
Group's growing Digital capabilities and scalable, highly invested
IT platform has enabled Morses Club to deliver an increasingly
broad range of financial products and services to the non-standard
credit market.
UK HCC is considered to be a specialised segment of the broader
UK non-standard credit market. UK HCC loans are typically small,
unsecured cash loans delivered directly to customers' homes.
Repayments are collected in person during weekly follow-up visits
to customers' homes.
Morses Club's HCC division is the second largest UK Home
Collected Credit (HCC) lender with 151,000 (1) customers throughout
the UK. The majority of the Company's customers are repeat
borrowers and the HCC division enjoys consistently high customer
satisfaction scores of 98% (2) . In 2016, the Morses Club Card, a
cashless lending product, was introduced and in 2019 the Company
introduced an online customer portal for its HCC customers, which
now has over 107,000 (1) registered customers.
The Group's growing Digital division, Shelby Finance, operates
under two online brands. Dot Dot Loans provides online instalment
loans of up to 48 months to c. 23,000 (1) active customers. U
Account is a leading digital current account provider offering an
alternative to traditional banking by providing a fully functional
agency banking service. U Account currently has c. 6,000 (1)
customers.
Morses Club listed on AIM in May 2016.
About the UK non-standard credit market
The UK non-standard credit market, of which UK HCC is a subset,
consists of both secured and unsecured lending and is estimated to
comprise around 10 million consumers (3) and total loan receivables
of GBP10.7bn (4) .
Non-standard credit is the provision of secured and unsecured
credit to consumers other than through mainstream lenders. Lenders
providing non-standard credit principally lend on an unsecured
basis and the market is characterised by high frequency borrowing.
Approximately 2 million people move annually between standard and
non-standard markets (4) .
Since February 2014, unsecured personal lending has grown from
GBP161 billion to GBP225 billion in February 2020. It has since
contracted to GBP197 billion in March 2021(5) .
(1 As per audited figures at 27 February 2021 2 Independent
Customer Satisfaction Survey conducted by Mustard 3 FCA High Cost
Credit Review Technical Annex 1: CRA data analysis of UK personal
debt - July 2017 4 Apex Insight - Non-Prime Consumer Credit: UK
Market Insight Report - September 2019 5 Table A5.2, Bank of
England Money and Credit Bank stats March 2021)
This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the
London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct
Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United
Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution
of this information may apply. For further information, please
contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.
RNS may use your IP address to confirm compliance with the terms
and conditions, to analyse how you engage with the information
contained in this communication, and to share such analysis on an
anonymised basis with others as part of our commercial services.
For further information about how RNS and the London Stock Exchange
use the personal data you provide us, please see our Privacy
Policy.
END
TSTEASNNEDPFEEA
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 09, 2021 02:00 ET (06:00 GMT)
Morses Club (LSE:MCL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2024 to May 2024
Morses Club (LSE:MCL)
Historical Stock Chart
From May 2023 to May 2024