27 October 2015 – trading update
The company has issued a trading update covering the third quarter of the year and this has revealed growth in both customer numbers and credit issued. The European home credit business has proved resilient with strong progress made by the Digital business which is on track to commence lending in Spain by the year end. There was another excellent performance in Mexico which continues to generate strong growth. In Poland, which has been a cause for concern due to new legislation capping the amount of non-interest costs, the company continues to look at ways to mitigate the effect of this. The group expects the full year results to be broadly in line with expectations with pre-tax profits likely to be around £118m for earnings per share of 37.5p. However, the uncertainty caused by the Polish business with the new legislation increasingly affecting the company in 2016/2017 means that we reduce our recommendation to HOLD.