Earnings season gets underway for ASX financial small caps today, with BNPL and credit plays announcing their results.

Three companies in particular have announced strong results – Credit Inteligence (ASX:CI1, HUMM Group (ASX:HUM), and Harmoney (ASX:HMY).

Market leader Afterpay (ASX:APT) will announce its earnings tomorrow.
 

Credit Intelligence

The debt restructuring and personal insolvency company announced solid first half numbers for the half-year FY21.

Its overall profit increased by 42% over the previous half-year, with 25% increase attributable to members of the parent entity, to $1.57 million.

This is on the back of a 21% increase in revenue to $7.37 million. The company also reported a positive cashflow from operations of $0.5 million.

In the insolvency space, Credit Intelligence operates in two markets – Hong Kong and Singapore.

The company said that the Hong Kong results were in line with the prior year, despite the impact from COVID-19 – with its core bankruptcy business performing solidly. It booked Hong Kong revenues at $3.3 million.

The company handles more than 10,000 bankruptcy cases in Hong Kong, managed by its proprietary purpose-built software to process the large amount of data involved.

The Singapore results, meanwhile, were mixed with its ICS Funding Pte Ltd subsidiary results being well under the previous year due to government support provided to SMEs. Once the government support is pulled back in March 2021, Credit Intel expects the ICS business will grow strongly.

ICS was founded in 2015 and provides funding to SMEs as an alternative to banks.

Meanwhile its other Singaporean subsidiary Hup Hoe Credit Pte Ltd performed strongly for the half year. Hup Hoe is a registered moneylender in Singapore providing personal loans to individuals.

The total Singapore revenues were reported at $3.74 million, up from $2.3 million on pcp.
 

Credit Intelligence enters the BNPL space

On 23 February, the company announced its entrance into the BNPL space with the launching of YOZO Pay. The service uses artificial intelligence, developed by University of Technology Sydney, to help SMEs with their cashflows. It offers same-day approval loans and automatic limit changes, and allows borrowers to choose their payment frequencies.

The Credit Intelligence share price rocketed by 70% to 12c on the day of the announcement, before retreating back to the current levels of 7.1c.

Jimmie Wong, executive chairman and managing director of Credit Intelligence, said:

“We are excited to have commenced lending via the YOZO Pay BNPL service for SMEs. This is a truly unique offering and is set to revolutionise lending for small and medium enterprise by providing a product which is not only aligned with the operations and cashflow of the business, but is also faster, cheaper and more transparent for the SME owner to use – allowing them more time to focus on the day-to-day running of their business. This SME BNPL service is totally different from other personal BNPL products being offered in Australia right now.”

 

HUMM

The SME credit company, HUMM, also announced strong results today – delivering 1H FY21 cash NPAT of $43.4m, up 25.8% on pcp.

The company said the growth in cash NPAT has mainly been driven by increased profitability of its Commercial Leasing and Cards segments – as well as a reduction in operating expenses, which is down 11.1% (including depreciation).

Humm said it grew the total active customers by 40 per cent on pcp to 2.62 million users as at 31 December.

Its BNPL offering, Little Things, has seen an increase in transaction volume to $112.2m, up 46.5% on pcp, with online purchases making up almost 80% of that total.

The company is pushing further into the BNPL space, launching a new BNPL product a few days ago, called Hummpro. The product is aimed at SMEs in Australia and New Zealand to track their cashflows in one place.

Hummpro can be used with Mastercard, which means it can be used online, in store and to pay supplier invoices. Management pitched this as a differentiation to other BNPL products, because other  products require that suppliers are onboarded first.
 

Harmoney

New Zealand based Harmoney was another financial play that announced solid results today. The company reported a cash NPAT of NZ$1.2m, an increase of $4.0m on 1H20. This comes off a revenue of NZ$42m, in line with 1H20.

Loan originations grew by 47% to NZ$194m, exceeding its prospectus forecasts.

The company said its credit book quality has continued, with 90+ day arrears declining to a historical low of 0.60%

The Harmoney share price has dropped by 37% since floating its shares on the ASX in November 2020 at $3.50 per share. It’s now trading at $2.20.

In its pitch to investors prior to the IPO, the prospectus said the company has originated over NZ$1.8 billion in personal loans since 2014, and has grown the book by 86% from FY15 to FY20.

 

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Credit Intelligence is a Stockhead advertisers, it did not sponsor this article.

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