TIME Time Finance Plc

 

TIDMOPM 
 
RNS Number : 9330A 
1PM PLC 
16 October 2009 
 

1pm plc 
 
 
Trading Statement 
 
 
1pm plc (the "Company") announces that during September it terminated an usually 
high number of lease agreements the majority of which resulted from customer 
bankruptcies. In the event of bankruptcy of a customer, it is the Company's 
policy to write-off immediately any amounts due as bad debt. Therefore in 
September the Company has written off bad debt amounting to approximately 
GBP95,000. The Directors can attribute no particular reason as to why the level 
of lease terminations and bad debt have been so high in September, there having 
been no requirement for any bad debt write-offs in the three previous months. 
While the Directors are disappointed by this development the loan agreements 
affected are relatively long-standing and large and more significantly predate 
the company's decision earlier this year to reduce its average deal size. The 
Directors remain confident that the company's underwriting criteria is robust 
and that the reduction in average deal size will increasingly reduce the 
Company's exposure to large individual bad debts. 
 
 
Overall trading in the first four months of the year has been mixed. Income is 
up 12% on the equivalent period last year but gross profit (before bad debt 
write-offs) is down principally due to general increase in bad debt provisioning 
that has been applied since the beginning of the year. Levels of new business 
have also been somewhat lower than anticipated.  Initially the Directors believe 
this is due to the effects of the reduced level of funding available referred to 
in the announcement of 12 March 2009, which took longer to unwind than expected 
following the June fundraising. More recently, demand over the August holiday 
period has proved weaker than expected and has been below the level experienced 
in August last year. Pleasingly, demand in September has increased 
significantly compared to August although it remained below originally budgeted 
levels. 
 
 
It is too early in the current year to comment on the likely outcome for the 
year especially as trading performance is expected to be second half weighted. 
However, although income and the average value of the overall loan book for the 
year are expected to continue to increase, the incidence of September's bad debt 
write-offs means that it is now unlikely that the Company will report a profit 
for the year. 
 
 
+-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ 
| Contacts:                               |                                         | 
+-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ 
|                                         |                                         | 
+-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ 
| 1pm plc                                 |                           www.1pm.co.uk | 
+-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ 
| Mike Johnson, Chairman                  |                    +44 (0) 844 967 0944 | 
+-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ 
|                                         |                                         | 
+-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ 
| WH Ireland Limited                      |                    www.wh-ireland.co.uk | 
+-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ 
| Mike Coe / Marc Davies                  |                    +44 (0) 117 945 3470 | 
+-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ 
 
 
 
This information is provided by RNS 
            The company news service from the London Stock Exchange 
   END 
 
 TSTILFSVIELRLIA 
 

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