No asset quality challenges in gold loans- Manappuram Finance

Update on the Indian Equity Market:

On Monday, Nifty closed 3.4% lower at 8,823. Among the sectoral indices PVT Bank (-6.9%), Bank (-6.7%), Fin Services (-6.6%) closed lower. ITand Pharma closed marginally higher. Cipla (+5.5%),TCS (+2.5%), and INFRATEL (+2.3%) closed on a positive note. Indusind bank (-9.6%), Zee (-9.5%) and Eicher Motor(-7.9%) were among the top losers.

Excerpts from an interview of MrVP Nandakumar,MD & CEO, Manappuram Finance with ET Now 15^thMay 2020:

• Speaking about 4QFY20 profit jump, Mr.Nandakumar said the main gold business has grown well sequentially and in other businesses the growth is steady.
• Speaking about provisions he said it is rather as a caution and that is the only reason for the higher provisioning.
• Collections use to be higher in March-April period in non-gold portfolio, vehicle finance and home finance. But this time, March has been rather dull.From the very beginning, there were signs of lockdown in many places, particularly in places like Kerala. So from the second-third week of March, the collections slowed down. This also led to some increase in the provisioning.
• Around 70% of branches are operational now and there is good demand for gold loans. At the same time there are lot of redemptions, people want to monetize the gold.
• The demand for gold is at sub normal levels, as entire demand has not picked up.
• Guiding for FY21 he said the first one or two quarters the company may not be able to grow gold loans, but there is expectation to grow in third and fourth quarter by 7-8%.
• Speaking about non gold business share which declined from 34% to 33% on QoQ basis, he saidlast year there were advantages of price as well as demand, and the gold loan growth was much more than what was expected.The company have turned a little more conservative on non-gold business.Also there is some sluggishness in various economic activities.
• Speaking about asset quality, he saidgold loan currently is around 69% and the company does not see any challenges in asset quality in gold loans. Gold loan tenure is three months and online gold loan is around 60%, even now regular transactions are taking place to the extent of Rs 700-800 crores, the interest collection is also taking place.
• In other segments like vehicle finance, many of our customers have opted for moratorium. The collections are coming now through the online mode to the extent of 40-45%. Lending is primarily to the lower end that is light commercial vehicles and small commercial vehicles.
• Another major part of portfolio is two-wheelers and the customer profile is self employed as well as salaried people and the collections are better there.

Consensus Estimate: (Source: market screener and Investing.com websites)

• The closing price of Manappuram Financewas ₹ 122/- as of 18-May-2020.  It traded at 1.5x/ 1.25x the consensus Book value estimate of ₹ 80/97 for FY21E/ FY22E respectively.
• The consensus average target price forManappuram Finance is ₹ 153/- which implies a PB multiple of 1.5x on FY22E BV of ₹97/-.

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