www.suplc.co.uk
S&U PLC is the United Kingdom's foremost niche consumer and motor finance provider.
Based in Solihull in the West Midlands it has operations throughout the United Kingdom from Edinburgh to London to Grimsby to Falmouth in Cornwall. It provides work for nearly 800 people and is proud to provide 140,000 people throughout the country with their consumer and motor finance requirements.
S & U 's motto is to provide Britain's "foremost consumer and motor finance service for its customers". We continually strive to achieve that ideal and the results are benefiting our customers, our employees and of course our shareholders.
S & U pleased with progress and looking forward to good half year
Anthony Coombs, the CEO of the Midlands-based niche money-lending firm S & U (LON:SUS) reckons the business, established in 1938 by his grandfather Clifford Coombs, is "recession resistant".
The firm was floated in 1961 and has more than 140,000 customers and nearly 800 employees.
"Our business is a consumer facing business and I am very confident it's recession proof...not entirely.... but resistant," he said in a recent interview with Proactive Investors.
The company chief said that both sides of the business - the home credit (called Loansathome4U) and the motor finance side (called Advantage Finance) - were progressing well although the current economic climate had certainly played its part in influencing the behaviour of customers.
Indeed, at the firm's AGM in May, Coombs told shareholders how resilience and responsibility of the company in uncertain times had brought its own type of reward as it reported revenues for the four months since 1 February up by 2 percent in the home credit business.
S&U's home credit services sees a representative of the company (they have 500) go to people's houses to loan money out and to receive repayments. Currently each representative collects on average around £3,000 per week.
Meanwhile, the motor finance business offers hire purchase (HP) finance mainly to those in the sub and non-prime sectors, so they can purchase vehicles.
"I think we are extremely popular and will grow in popularity because people want relationships. They can't get relationships with the banks anymore.
"A lot of people are nervous of remote lending and people like our very convenient finance," Coombs explained.
He conceded that although people pay for the weekly visit by the representative, the Competition Commission - on a total repayment basis - had said S & U was of very similar value money to anyone else in sector.
On current trading, Coombs said the company was performing well and that sales were ahead of last year. "Our collections are strong," he said.
In terms of the car finance business, applications levels were still good, said Coombs.
Indeed applications have been buoyed by people coming down from other areas of the market into Advantage's market sector.
"Our figures for the motor finance business are extremely good. For example we beat our budget last month by about 22 transactions (about 6 per cent)."
Coombs said he had 'every confidence' that the firm would meet its budgeted increase in turnover (for transactions) of around 10 percent for the car business.
"The quality of the debt is very good. So therefore our bad debt and the amount of money we can take into profit which is related to our collections is also looking good."
When asked about the company's possible move to AIM, revealed after last month's AGM, Coombs said the matter was as yet undecided and hinged on shareholder support.
When asked whether there was anything that kept him awake at night, Coombs said: "We don't think there is any regulatory problems so far as the business is concerned, so therefore there's not too much that keeps me awake at night but that's only on the basis that you work very hard indeed at managing the business."
He added that he was very pleased with the way things were progressing and was looking forward to a good half year.
Current share price: 607.50 pence
Market Cap: £74 million.
