Earnings Call: H1 2022

Sep 30, 2021

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the SNU PLC Interim Results for the six month period ending the 07/31/2021 Investor Presentation. Throughout this presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Presentation. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. These will be available via our Investor Meet company dashboard and we'll notify you when they're ready for your review. I'd also like to remind you that this presentation is being recorded. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll and if you would give that your kind attention, we would be very grateful. And I'd now like to hand over if I may to Anthony Coombs, Chairman from SNU. Good afternoon, sir. Thank you, Mark, and welcome to everybody. I must say that we are very great fans of Investor Meet, and we find a very, very good way of communicating effectively with our shareholders, particularly retail shareholders. And I hope you're all pleased with the results that we've announced for this half year. And we're gonna be giving you an opportunity to ask questions, and, hopefully, we'll provide answers for you, which will which will will will will be very satisfactory. Can I just say that I think that the half year has proved that SNU as a company is back on track, that we are very soundly placed now to take advantage of the increased opportunities for growth that we anticipate in both our businesses for the second half of the year and, obviously, years subsequent to that? Our people have coped quite magnificently with COVID, and it's to them that I would like to pay tribute. Every single one of our of our colleagues and indeed our customers, but particularly our colleagues. Some of them working at owing quite difficult conditions. I think they have gone quite magnificently. I'd like to put that on the, the record. We're very firmly based in terms of, our finances, thanks to the very good work of, of Chris Redford, our finance director, who has put in place facilities during the half year, which give us significant headroom for further for further growth. And the quality of our debt, both in Advantage and in Aspen, our bridging finance business, is absolutely superb. And and I I could have paid tribute there both to to Graham Wheeler and his team, particularly on the collection side in Advantage, and also to Ed Aaron's who has collected an increasing and in fact, a record amount of business in the second half of the year for Aspen. And don't forget, we always say that it's good finance and being a good finance business is not only about sales and about transactions. It's about being able to collect and having good relations with your customers as a result. And I think that when we come to it, you'll see that our Trustpilot scores, particularly at Advantage, show that we score very highly on that. So without further ado, I'd like to to hand over to Chris Redford, who will introduce the highlights for the half year. And if we could just change two slides. The next one, please. That's it. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Anthony. Good afternoon, everybody. What are the financial highlights in our half year results? So profit before tax, we're very pleased with group profit before tax, nineteen point nine million against the COVID affected six point three million last year, and we'll give you more details on that as we go through the presentation. Similarly, earnings per share up against the COVID affected, results last year. And, you'd be pleased to hear we've we've proposed the first interim dividend for this year, which is 50% upon last year re reflecting some of those results. So what has driven this, this great profit result? Well, in advantage, it's it's mainly excellent collections and lower than normal bad debt attrition. There's an economic factor behind that, but there's also very much some excellent work from Graham Wheeler and the team at Advantage in in collections over the last four months, but also continuing into August and September. New loan volumes have also increased month by month, particularly since the dealerships reopened in April, and the profit before tax for the half year for advantage was an excellent 18 and a half million against last year, which was affected by extra impairment provisions. In Aspen, they had a very good second half last year when book debt grow from 18,000,000 up to 34,000,000. And this year, they've continued that with growth up to 57,000,000 in book debt, and that's obviously created more profit. Their profit of 1,500,000.0 is actually more than they've ever made in a year before, and that's just in a half year this year. So well done to the Aspen team too. Moving on. What are the highlights in the income statement? Well, you can see against the, COVID affected last year, we're quite level on revenue. It's actually a 5% increase on the second half last year, so we've got the book and the income moving in the right direction now. Impairments, very big figure last year, twenty one point seven million. So that's not a very good comparative because that was COVID effective. If you go back two half years to July 2019, the figure then was seven point nine million, and and that's a pre pandemic figure. So against that figure on similar sized book debt, impairment is two point eight million better than that figure, which reflects the excellent collections in Advantage in particular. Other highlights in the income statement, cost of sales is up, but that more reflects, increasing new deal volumes this year, versus the lockdown last year and admin expenses. Well, last year, obviously, people weren't earning their bonuses. We also had a bit of help from a one off b 18 refund. So admin expenses are up a bit this year, but there's good reasons behind that. So you can see the profit before tax for the group as it was on the first slide, 19,900,000.0 against 6,300,000.0 last year. Moving on. The balance sheet is nice and simple, so, even accountants can cope with it. You've got amounts receivable, motor finance, that that's down on this time last year. But as I say, in the in the half year, it's actually gone up slightly, since January 2021. Property bridging, obviously, that's a very big increase, but it has been gradual. It went from 18,000,000 at this time, July 20, sorry, up to 34,000,000 at the year end and now 57,700,000.0. And Ed, the CEO of Aspen, will kindly say a bit more about that growth in in his session later. The other side of the balance sheet, how are we financing it? Well, we've got good group equity still, and you can see that's gone to a 189,000,000 from 174,000,000 last year, and the borrowings haven't gone up that much, I e, the investment extra investment we've made in Aspen has been compensated for by good cash generation advantage. And if we could give you some detail on that cash flow, moving on to the next slide. This is the, where has all the money gone slide. So you can see on the right hand side, there's two sections, motor finance cash flow, so you can see, how we've spent your money last year in the first half year and this year in the first half year. And similarly for Aspen property bridging, you can see how we spent your money in, the first half year this year against last year. And you can see therefore in Aspen, it's mostly extra advances, but quite a lot of extra collections as well. The book's very clean at the moment. In motor finance cash flow, again, an increase in advantage, but very good what we call basic monthly live collections. And Graham Wheeler, the CEO of Advantage, will go on to say more about that in his presentation. Group cash flow therefore has moved so that at the end of the period, it's a 115,100,000.0 against a 108,000,000 at the half year last year. Moving on to the next slide. Treasury and funding. Anthony actually mentioned this in in his introduction. We we we've actually put in place extra maturity and extra facilities, so now our total committed facilities are a 180,000,000. So if our borrowings are a 115,000,000 as per the previous slide, we've got about £65,000,000 worth of headroom. This is anticipation of our growth plans going forward. And group cash outflow in the six months that also reflects dividends as well as the trading outflows that I mentioned. Next slide, please. I'll hand over now to, Graham Wheeler, who some of you will have heard from before, and he will talk about operations and direction at Advantage. Yeah. Thanks, Chris. Yeah. I've got a few slides just to update people on on operationally how we're managing and develop the business and advantage over the last six months. I wanted to start with with our people. Anthony mentioned it earlier on that our our our team have taken us through previously difficult times and and are are buoyantly back into the the groove of of business again now. We've adopted a a hybrid working model similar to many other businesses. Of the 180 staff we've got, we've got a maximum number of people in the office at any one time of a 120, but that averages itself out somewhere about a 100 to a 105 every day of the week. And and that's given us that that kind of hybrid working model is something that we'll adopt pretty much forevermore because it's really working for us very well. As we transition then to the from home into the office environment, we we took the opportunity to be assessed by investors and people. So something that Advance should have done historically in the past. We took the opportunity in the middle of all that to assess ourselves again, and we were delighted that we were awarded the silver status in advance investors and people, which is an upgrade from from the previous year. And and with one very small item that stopped us getting the gold, which we're now currently working on, we're confident next time then we'll move into the gold as we adjust our business according to the report. That that maybe gives a a a people a a feel for the way that our people have, felt about the advantage in the same way that we feel about them, and, and and and they've given us a a great response. If you move on to the next slide, please. The should my clicker's on? Yep. Okay. Thank you. So, the big issue in terms of what's going on in the market is sales. Since the the the the release from lockdown on April 12, what we've seen a slow but gradual increase in term, and we we kind of expected a big boom, but that didn't happen because as I actually, after the April 12, you probably all remember that the government released sections of s sections of society piece for piece, and that had an effect in terms of the the the car market and the car finance market. We've also been affected by the microchip shortage in terms of new cars, and people have seen that there's been lots of delays 20 I think the market in terms of new cars are 20% down based on even last year. And and that's had a knock on effect in terms of the focus on nearly new cars and used car finance. People have shifted out of new cars. In fact, some used cars now at the moment are actually more expensive than the the brand new price of a car. And because the market's been focused on satisfying demand in the new and new car sector, actually, used cars in in the sector that we trade in, which is the slightly older, higher mileage vehicles have fallen by the wayside a little bit, and the the the stock is significantly reduced in the marketplace just now for the the types of vehicles that we normally finance. And, anecdotally, one of our dealer partners is operating currently with a 150 vehicles in stock when they would normally have 600 vehicles in stock, and that gives you a feel for the lack of the the lack of quality used car stock that's in the sector that we currently operate in. That has driven values up a little bit and deliveries down, and that's created a bit more competition because there are still the same finance companies about, but a lot less deals that are there just now. But regardless of the competition in there, we've done really well. Our sales volumes have gradually increased month on month, almost in a linear fashion during the course of this year, and we've taken the opportunity to adjust our business mix, which hasn't had a knock on effect in terms of our average rate and margin. We've done that by constantly focused on improving the quality of the business from moving from our risk reduction position within the middle of last year to a managing risk position now. We've controlled the commissions we're paying to our retailers. We aren't we aren't increasing the amount of commissions at all, and that's and we're and and by also applying a more aggressively in terms of the better quality business, which is gonna compensate us for in terms of the bonds of business that we've had at the other end of the scale. And I'll if you I'll I'll just click on to that next step, the next chart, which kind of brings that into focus a little bit. The chart on the left hand side shows the increase in volume month on month and also shows that during the course of the last, I guess, last two or three months, we've seen an increase in our levels of tiers d and e, which is our lower quality business but higher rates business. That's been done by design because we adjusted our scorecard a little bit in terms of tier tier e, that's given us the confidence to move back into that marketplace that we had stepped away from in the middle of last year, the middle of the pandemic. So great news from that point of view has a knock on effect in a number of areas. Firstly, as we've adjusted the mix of the business, our average rate in terms of lending has been up during the course of the the first six months. And because the increasing value of cars, we're able to finance a little bit more on the cars as well. So effectively, the average value of the lenders has gone from 6 and a half thousand to just over 7,000. So it's like in a perfect situation of growing volumes, better mix, increase the level of average rate, but and applied to a higher average lens, and and that all goes well for the future of the business as that as that as that mix has continued. And, actually, that mix has continued into the first two months of of of this quarter as well. So we're from that point of view. We're making some good progress from sales, and we've got some ideas in terms of how we can grow our business, which I'll talk about in a couple of seconds. In terms of our customers, they're still giving us great feedback. We we our our the the approach we've taken in terms of our employees is to is to provide that human touch to our customers, and and some of the feedback we're getting is is first class even from those some of those customers who have had really difficult times financially and from a social point of view and, you know, comments about being as the best customer service in The UK and that it broke recommended Vantage Finance. Those are great comments that were scored really well. But that kind of relationship with our customers is the basis of the success that we've applied to our collections processes. And what I just wanted to just talk about briefly where we are in terms of because that's the thing that's driving the the increased level of profitability within the with within Advantage. The chart on the right shows the percentage of live cash receipts in the business, and we if you if you go back to October 20, we were collecting about 87% of live cash. That's gradually improved into into this year. We're averaging in excess of 94%, which is actually, a record for Advantage Finance in terms of that live cash collection position us. And how do we do that? Well, we identified that customers coming off of payment holidays, many of them six month payment holidays, had to be coaxed back into the process or the habit of repaying us again after having six months off. So we kind of, we took the approach that said, actually, rather than chasing them for all of a sudden chasing them for a full monthly payment in many cases, our focus was on just getting customers back into the habit of paying again. So we changed the bonus structure of our collections team so that they we we we rewarded the collections team on arranging sustainable or or having a sentence a sustainable payment arrangements for customers rather than pure cash collected, and and that has had a really significant effect in the amount of live cash. So we're getting we may not be getting full monthly payments from every single customer, but the fact that we're getting money from almost every single customer has driven that live cash proceed over 94%. We successfully applied a self developed payment portal to customers so that when they do miss a direct debit, we immediately send them a link to say, oops, we noticed you've missed your direct debit. Here's a payment link to make make your payment on on a mobile mobile phone, and that has really worked for us as well as we've taken lots of nice healthy cash in from customers through the payment portal. And at the other end, we we set aside two or three of our most experienced talented collectors and set our intensive care service for customers who were having some real serious problems with their finances. The purpose of that was to keep customers in the cars, try and help them to work their way through the the problems they've got, and get them back into making some sort of some sort of payment towards us. And and the net effect of all those things has been as well as the increased level of live cash being received, it's also reduced the number of bad debts, reduced the number of loans determinations, which is having a a very significant impact on on a positive impact on the financials of the business. So from that point of view, that's the story behind our collection performance and the and the and the and the financial performance. I just wanted to touch briefly on on further growth for the future. We've got a number of projects that are kind of all technology based and digital based. We've been spending a lot of time and effort working on our digital marketing proposition. We've kind of reworked it and redesigned our website over the course of the last few months, which has had created a threefold increase in the number of direct web visits from customers who are searching out finance from our type of our type of offering. And and that has had an impact on the volumes of direct business, which is which is which is grown significantly as well during that last six month period as well. And we've got a plan in place over the course of the next few months to take that into into another level too. So great great stuff from the digital marketing perspective. We're working we we set up, guess, about a year just over a year ago, a linkage to another finance company who are more of a prime organization, we built a link between their system and our system so that we can take and have a look at some of the the the deals that they didn't fancy according to their risk appetite. And and and actually, that's that's actually generating about 90 deals a month through that session just now, which has gone really well. But we're in discussions with another much larger opportunity where we can link our system to a prime finance company. Effectively, it it it we we have a a kind of partnership agreement in place with them, and that potentially could create a lot more volume for us in the future. And, hopefully, we'll be able to tell you more about that in a bit more detail maybe next time we we we get together. And then lastly, from an aggregator website, the the aggregator websites like confuse.com, compare.com, moneymoneysupermarket.com are all beginning to move into motor finance as a price comparison position, and we are working behind the scenes to to get involved in that with one of one of two of our our broker partners. And and, again, that is that's got a big potential for us as well, and we'll we'll continue to work on that over the course of the next couple of months. Lastly, what because the payment portal has been so successful, we're developing that further into other online tool services for customers to be able to digitize their relationship with us for those that want to gather more information from us, and that should free our resources up, our great people up to provide even more of a human touch for those people who need us most. So it's been and from somebody from that vantage point of view, the last six months have been a great from a collections point of view, growing opportunity and growing performance from a sales point of view, and we've not been resting our laurels on that. We've been developing our business behind the scenes to be able to raise opportunities for further growth and further volume and further customer services in the future. So that's pretty much where we are with Advantage, and time for me to pass back on to Chris, I think. Thanks very much, Graham. Some some really exciting developments in Advantage there, and and I'm sure people were interested to hear about them. On, on statistics, we always try and be, very transparent in what's happening within both our businesses. And on motor finance, the main business, we quite often show you this slide. So I've updated it again at the half year, and you can see this is the showing the profile of new deals over the last six and a half years. You can see on the top line what number of new loans we've done. Graham's referred to a higher average advance in the six months, so hopefully, you can see that 7,050. But also, it's worth commenting here that the interest rate flat over the over the last year has been a bit lower, but that reflects the average customer score that you see just below that, which is much higher quality. Can you see we used to be about eight sixty, and now, we're about 900, nine zero five, and and that really is also part of what the reason why early repayments are so good. This is another slide that we've updated. It's a very complicated slide, but I'll do my best to explain it. What this slide does is show you the correlation between the way advantage customers make their first repayments and the end outcome in terms of, how many go bad to bad debt in five years' time. So the blue line is the way customers make their first repayment, and you can see on the left hand scale that between 90% and a 100% make their first repayment over the years since 2003 through to the current date. And then the red line is the inverse scale on the right hand side, which is the level of bad debt. And you can see over the years how closely they've been correlated. And just to talk a bit more about recent recent trends on this chart, you can see that after a a slight blip in March 2020, can you see when the blue line went down? That was when COVID hit and a few people who've just taken car loans out, a few more people than normal panicked and canceled the direct debit. So we we had to work hard to get them back on track. But then in line with Graham's strategy on quality, the quality has shot back up since then to be about 98, 98, 9%. In in the last couple of months, it's gone down slightly, but that all that reflects is Graham's previous chart where we're moving more back into tier d and e, which was more of our normal, areas for writing good advantage business. And and and that's had a slight impact on early repayment, but still very high. The reason the red line after about five years ago is dotted is obviously we haven't had those results yet, but if we could rely on how it was up to 02/2016, that would be great because there is a strong correlation between the way customers make their first repayments and the end outcome after five years, and that obviously helps the business because it means we can see any problems coming very early on and try and react to them. The reason the red dotted line is slightly below the blue line going forward is just we we think cautiously that there will be some impact post pandemic from some of the economic factors, increased inflation, bit more pressure maybe on disposable incomes, for certain of our customers, and and and that's feeding into those forecasts. But we obviously hope they're they're back up nearer the blue line if if they can be. Moving on, this one is also a slide that we've shown before. It's quite a complicated slide. I'll do my best to explain it. It's a balance sheet slide. So what it shows you is the status of our, our book of net receivables at the July 2021 versus the position at the January 2021. So you can see that at the July 2021, 41,034 of our customers were up to date out of a total of live accounts of 61,914, and, that's an improvement since the January when there were 39,411 accounts up to date out of a total of 62,651. And if you want to spend time looking at how far they were in arrears, you can also see that not to one arrears, six point o one plus. They may still be good customers. It it may be that that's a forty eight months deal with thirty six months into it, and they've only made 30 payments, so six are in arrears. And what we're measuring on here is original contract arrears so that we can see where the cash has gone. And, obviously, when dealing with the customer as as required by the FCA, we we treat, payment holidays as arrears. But on this slide, we wanted to show you as it is if, if we were measuring against the original contract. The three columns in the middle are quite interesting, I think. We've only got 48 accounts at the July who were on payment holiday, and you can see the profile of, where those accounts sit in contractor is, but that is now nil. So that column is now nil. 16,209 live accounts have had a payment holiday. They obviously need a bit more intensive care that Graham alluded to in his slides earlier. And then you've got the nonpayment holiday accounts where there hasn't been a payment holiday and can you see 90% of those are up to date. I hope that's of interest. Just below those two columns, can also see that, as a as a measure of collections, 96% of, nonpayment holiday accounts, due were were paid in July and 88% of post payment holiday accounts. As I say, they need a bit more intensive care, but they're paying very well at the moment. If we can move on to the next slide, please. And I'll introduce the CEO of Aspen Bridging, Ed Ayronds, and he will talk about developments in in our growing bridging business. Thanks, Ed. And thank you, Chris, and a warm hello from me. Aspen Bridging has had a strong '21 with some record transactions up at 66 for the first half first half of the year. And this largely also follows the the momentum that we were building at the 2020 following the reopening of the property market at the midyear point last year. Net lending of 56,000,000 is also a record. And as Chris mentioned, our PBT is 1.529 for the year. Just in terms of quality, we made some changes in 2020 that we benefited from in 2020, but that's also continued this year. We've got really what we're calling the best quality book that we've had, and we've only actually got one loan in default to put that into some context. So we've rep net receivables at 57.7. We've benefited a bit from that from accreditation to the CBILS government scheme. That scheme has actually closed, and we're back focusing on our prime core bridging propositions. Anticipating growth for for this year, we've made some early recruitment, bolstered the team, and we've also, you know, worked a hybrid model. In fact, the the Aspen team have been capable of remote working ever since we launched as part of our day to day. That enabled us to continue to operate smoothly through the troubles that we had certainly at the 2020 from a COVID and lockdown as well as the 2021. We're always keeping our eye very close on our competition and what's happening in the marketplace, and we continue to tweak and we present ourselves on a product basis whilst ensuring, you know, we take the right approach to risk, rigorous underwriting standards as always. Just from a a more holistic point of view, we've since launch, we've we've issued out 300 new loans over the four and a half years, and 210 of those have repaid. And I think, really, the message is overall, it reinforces what we believe is is our opportunity to to grow progressively with quality lending. I'll hand over to Anthony. Thank you. Thank you, Ed, and thank you for all those who've contributed. Excellent. I think you've heard the what I was mentioning in the beginning in that we've got a very firm base for taking advantage of very significant opportunities in growth. And I think you'll also be hopefully impressed by the hard work that our people have been doing during COVID in actually preparing the ways in which we can increase our market reach and increase our market share. And that's certainly that's certainly our intention. Now without any further ado, I'm gonna go on to to questions. We've got a nice balance of questions. And first one is my brother will deal with. It's from Mark d sorry, Michael d. I do apologize, Michael. And over to over to Graham. Okay. This is we're doing a bit of musical chairs here because I only got one monitor. Right. The the question is, great results. Well done from Michael Deeb. Very nice of you to say so. Do you see this momentum continuing, or would you see m and a forming part of your growth? Well, I think the momentum element has been dealt with by the other speakers in large part. And and I and we do think that momentum is going to be maintained, in fact, if anything, increase, largely result of what we perceive to be increasingly, hopefully, a a long term market trends and also because of of of innovations which we're making in our distribution networks. The the point about the M and A, well, ideologically, we've gotten we haven't got any aversion to, buying other businesses, but there's just two points for each of you made. First of all, buying other businesses as a whole doesn't seem historically, it's never been a terribly successful activity. You know, it's only one in three, they reckon acquisitions actually lends itself to an increase in in tangible value of the acquirer. And so, obviously, we have to be very selective if we were to undertake any acquisitions. And secondly, we'd probably only undertake under those circumstances, probably only undertake acquisitions if it enables us to do something which in house we couldn't do ourselves. And, you know, there may be instances where that's that's the case, but, you know, we we'd have to be very selective again in identifying these kind of opportunities. Does that answer the question? Yeah. Okay. Let me just wait. That's great. And thank you, Graham. I mean, we're we're obviously we're obviously open to open to offers on on potential acquisition opportunities, but we do set quite high standards, as my brother has just said, in terms of in terms of what we're prepared to to to look at. But, you know, if there's very good businesses around, we'll have a look at them. The next one is from Javier R. I hope that's I hope that I pronounced that right, Javier. And the the question is and I don't know if Chris can see it, but I'd like Chris to answer if you could, our our finance director. It's about the historical ROE. Over to you, Chris. Thanks, Anthony. Would SNU be able to maintain its historical ROE in the future? And would Aspen affect this figure in a positive or negative way? Thanks very much for the question, Javier. Obviously, I think I think we're probably referring to historical ROE before last year, when we had a bit of a blip due to COVID. And and, yes, I think we can. I think there's some excellent developments going on in the business, in both sides of the business that lead me to say that. Aspen is a bit more capital intensive. So, yes, if we moved more of the capital into Aspen, then the returns would come down slightly, but it is quite marginal. And and I think there's a good return on equity going forward given the developments in the business. I hope that answers the question. Thank you, Chris. So the next one is from Chris R. It's not our Chris R who is who is our finance director. Actually, I'm sorry. I do apologize. Before we get to that one, there is one from Daniel C. And I'm gonna ask I'm gonna ask Graham Wheeler to deal with that one. Yeah. Thanks, Anthony. So the question is, do you think the increases in used car prices are temporary? And if so, how do you manage the risk of potential lending against an overvalued collateral? Which which, of course, is is is is a great couple of questions. I think the used car prices are probably quite cyclical. In fact, they're always cyclical, but all of the analysts tell us that the the lack of stock is likely to have an impact for some time yet. And the the feedback we're getting from people like Cap and Glasses Guide and Kuzana, they're saying that the current situation will probably last until probably the spring, early summer of next year. So that's where we are with that. So so by that time, I think we'll begin to see some reductions in terms of used car values. The question then is how do you manage the risk? Well, I guess, couple of things. Firstly, we we we maintain our the look at some rules around what we're lending against vehicles, and what we've actually seen is from enough is a reduction in what we call our loan to value from eighty, ninety, eighty per 88% over the course of the over the course of the last six months. But much more importantly than that is is we do a very detailed affordability calculation for our customers to make sure that they've got the headroom in their finance to be able to afford the car. And it's that affordability calculation that we will set we set a limit on the amount we're prepared to lend at the rate we're prepared to lend that will have a controlling factor in terms of or or mitigating factor in terms of potential risk of overvaluation of cars. So those two things together make us feel a bit a bit more confident that we are somewhat protected by drops in value. And I have to say, given the fact that in the marketplace, we then we were looking at cars at 6 and a half thousand to 7,000 pounds, you know, our percentage increase on our fiber on that type of valuation certainly doesn't have the same effect as the same percentage you're planning to sell to a new car at 30 or £40,000. So think we're somewhat protected in terms of the market we're operating in as well. Good. Yeah. We've got a lot of very good questions now. The next one is from Chris R. And that one this one is for you as well, Graham Yeah. On the car side. Yeah. I thanks, Anthony. Yeah. So the the the question from from Chris is, do you see the current momentum in used car sales continuing? And if so, is anything restricting your growth? I I I think that our own current momentum is continuing and it's doing what, you know, we've moved into the third quarter and doing very well from that point of view. We we the all of the statistics are saying that during the course of 02/2022, there's an expectation of about a 10 to 11% increase in terms of used car sales volumes. So that will be hopefully, will be a bigger opportunity for us into next year. But I think the the the the growth factor for us will be the diversification of our sales channels, and I think we hope or we're very hopeful that those will create further opportunities for us too. So is it do we see the current momentum? I think, actually, if we get all this right, there's actually further momentum in terms of our use our used car finance sales. Is anything restricting our growth? Not not really. The the the the issue is is the very I think the very well managed pricing versus versus quality issue, which we maintain very rigorously within our business. And theoretically, we could write a lot more business at a lot lower rate, but that's not the business advantage. And we're we're we're here to maximize maximize returns to the best of our of our ability. And and and from that point of view, there's really nothing nothing to to hold us back. Good. Thank you so much, Graham. And the next one, I think, is is is yours as well from Simon c. Yeah. Thanks. You make you guys are making me work. Thank you very much for that. Famous question is, as furloughs ending, do you see this as a catalyst for bad debts to increase? Obviously, we're in regular contact with our customers, and we we believe that there is a a limited impact of furlough ending within our existing customer base. The thing that we're just conscious of is, you know, with increases in national insurance and increases in inflation in terms of fuel and motor insurance and living costs. That's actually probably for us, it's probably got more of a risk for us over the course of the next the next three to six months as we head towards head towards Christmas and, you know, people trying to pay money for holidays and trying to make a bigger impact in terms of Christmas this year compared to last. That that's that's the potential of having a a more of a a an impact on us, but but we're ready for it. We're prepared for it, and we're looking forward to helping our customers through those those challenges at the same time. So, hopefully, that's answered that question. Furlough is an issue, but I think it's limit it's more of a limit it's less of an issue than maybe for some of the other issues that are floating around in our society just now. Thank you, Graham. And next one is for Ed Aaron of Aspen from Jamie s. Ed? Thank you. Yes. The the the question is to what extent was the Aspen business boosted in h one by a rush to beat stamp duty holiday deadline? Good question. I mean, our our volumes in the '21 really have built on the momentum that we we we built up at the 2020. We have, the benefit of, the CBILS program, which has added to to receivables. But, actually, you know, the stamp duty is our target audience is mainly developers. Really, the impact of that was really on their own sales and therefore increasing the the repayment volume as opposed to increasing the new lending volume. So we'd see that as basically moving back more to normal and as we have a a strong pipeline for the rest of the year. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ed. Next question is a presubmitted question, not the one that we've had today. And over to you, Graham. Sorry for the overwork. We're very over here. Thanks, Anthony. No problem at all. Yeah. And this this is a question around sales volumes. So you said that could you give us some info about the sales volumes and the progression in August and September? Is the outlook for the sales in the next month next month expected to continue improving as an as an h one? And could you give us which amount of that sales volume we'd be comfortable for for 02/2022? So I think there's three questions that I'll add in there. The the the answer for August and September is that we have continued to grow our volumes in August and September, not quite at the same rate as between June and July. So we're I think the tracker that I saw this morning was shown about 1,900 for the month. So we've seen continued improvement month on month from a sales perspective. As the outlook for sales the next month is expected to continue, I think it's probably gonna tail off because of the lack of stock that's available, and we're planning for that within our budgets. And in terms of 2,022, I think I've been touched upon this earlier on about growth potential. We're certainly planning for an increase in terms of our natural sales volumes during 2022 up towards up towards 25,000 units, which would be, I guess, about a 15% increase in terms of our sales compared to this. And and we're quite we're quite confident that's gonna be achievable. Thank you, Graham. And next question is from Maynard p. And over to you, Chris, for this one. Thanks, Anthony. And, the question is, results revealed a lower than normal impairment charge of £5,000,000 for Advantage. What is management's best guess at a normal impairment rate for Advantage post pandemic as a proportion of motor receivables and or revenue? So that's quite quite a challenging question, post pandemic impairment rates. But what I tried to do was give investors a clue in the half year announcement by also comparing to the July 2019 figures. And if I look at the the last pre pandemic year as a whole, Advantage had impairment as a percentage of revenue of roughly 19%. Graham's been keeping the quality high as we've seen on previous slides. So normally, I'd say, well, I'd hope to beat that, but obviously, with the pandemic in mind and some of the factors that we've talked about in terms of inflation, increasing national insurance, a bit more pressure on disposable incomes, I I would tend to say a normal rate might be around that 19%. Thank you, Chris. Next one is from Robert G, and I'll take this one. Why did you sell the personal lending business a few years ago? Well, it very simple, Robert. First of all, we had a very good offer. And secondly, although we're great fans of the home credit business, and we think that it's been unnecessarily criticized mainly by certain middle class establishment who don't seem to understand the way in which many of our very good customers traded with us for over seventy years, we were concerned at the increasing tide of regulation, which actually was being imposed on what is essentially a very informal and trust based business. So those are the reasons why we sold, and we think it was exactly the right decision to take. And we've since obviously reinvested the proceeds in Advantage and also in establishing Aspen Bridging. Next one is Robert G. I'll take this one as well. Do you have plans in place for when senior owner directors retire? Well, given the fact, Robert, that I'm gonna be living to a 150, I can't really see that it's anything else but hypothetical. But actually, slightly more slightly more seriously, yes, of course, we have plans in place, and we do cultivate people within the business who who can who can step up. And and they're already actually working the business. My one of them is is my first cousin who is a director of the main board and also a director of of Aspen Bridging, very talented, very, very, very, very amenable, very, very decent, and very able very able executive. And I'm sure that that you'll be hearing a lot from him in the future. Next one is to Jamie S, which, again, I will deal with. Can you have any give any guidance on dividends as current forecasts are for a 9% increase for the full year when you increase the first interim dividend by a very welcome 50%. Reason for the the increase in the first interim interim dividend was that the profits increased, and we've always tried to keep a broad relationship. We like to be twice covered on our dividends between profits and the dividends we pay out to our loyal shareholders. And let me tell you that we're we're very confident about the future. We've got plenty of leeway with which to pay pay dividends. We think the profits will continue to increase. And as a result, without giving anything away at the moment, my own view is and obviously, it's up to to the board and ultimately shareholders for the final dividend. My own view is that that the expectations in the market for our dividends are a little or even more than a little on the conservative side. So next is Peter C, and that's over to you, Graham. Yeah. Thanks thanks, Anthony. Hi, Peter. Yep. What the question is what might be the effects of electric vehicles? So, obviously, we're in the we're we're we're in the middle of a transition from of petrol and diesel engines into electric vehicles in The UK market, in fact, across across the world just now. The the effect will be opportunity, in my view, as we transition towards more older mileage electric vehicles. We're not in that market yet because the majority of the long range electric vehicles haven't hit this five, six year old rate that we age of vehicle that we currently operate within. So the average price of a used electric vehicle just now is is is in excess of £20,000. I think it's closer to £25,000, and that's kind of out of our reach just now. So what we are doing is we're preparing for electric vehicles. We've got a specialist a special page on our website that specifically deals with electric vehicle financing and gives customers some some some help and guidance for what to look out for as they're as they are looking to take an electric vehicle on. And we've done a lot of research behind a lot of research to see how we can help customers through the management of electric vehicles moving moving forward. So for example, we've identified that each of the each of the batteries are are made up of lots of individual single cells to make up the overall battery situation, and we've identified that there there's an aftermarket developing in that marketplace just now that when a when a battery begins to degrade, it's usually down to one or two cells within the overall pack, and that and that those can be accessed and repaired relatively easy. So that gives us the confidence for for financing and managing the high level of electric vehicles into the future. We'll have to say the volumes at the moment are are are are are very, very small, almost to nothing in the categories we have. Last thing I'd say is we're in the process of changing all of our company cars and advantage finance to electric vehicles as well. I've got mine on order. It's coming at the end of this year. And the view was that if we're gonna move to electric vehicles in the marketplace, we we take a step ahead of everybody else and learn what it's like to manage electric vehicles ourselves so that when it comes to interaction with customers, we give the customers the best advice. So I've got a nice a nice BMW I four on the way with 366 miles on the clock, and I'm looking forward to having that and being able to and my and the rest of the directors will be able to speak to customers about what it's like to manage electric vehicles in future. And, Peter, if you ever fancy a chat about what what it's like to do that, delighted to speak to you about that. Great. That's oops. Sorry. Great. That's lovely. And thank you, Graham. Our next three slides are for for for Chris, although I think from Main RP and from Javier are again. Oh, I think Chris probably has has has replied to a couple of them. Anyway, Chris. Thank you, Anthony, and and thank you, Menard, for the question. Presentation slides show 16,000 accounts. So this is slide 16 if if we can just flick to that one. 16. That one. Yeah. Thank you. So there's a figure in the in the middle there. 16,209 accounts were on payment holiday, but have now come off payment holiday. And if you calculate that, that's about 26% of the live accounts. And the question is what level of the receivables do do those accounts represent? Well, because they're slightly older accounts, the ones that took the payment holidays, and they've also got big bigger provisions against them. It only represents just under 20% of our net receivables. The next question is from Javier R. For how long should we expect lower than normal loan loss provisioning charges in motor finance? Great great question, Javier. I'd I'd like to think it would be a long time, but realistically, I think it's it's more of a this year feature. So this year, obviously, we're working our way through, and and trying to work with customers post payment holidays, and as Graham alluded to earlier, keep them in cars. And so if we're successful in that and the collections are maintained, then we do expect lower than normal loan loss provisioning charges in h two as well. But then I would expect that they would normalize more as per my other answer to the, to the to the question on impairment as a percent of revenue might normalize at, say, 19%. That's not a guarantee. It was a a management guess as requested. Next question, Met from Main IP. Results show stage one motor provisions of 18,000,000, up 4,000,000 or so on the corresponding $1,314,000,000 stated for the previous twenty four months. Can management explain this 4,000,000 increase? It seems odd that stage one provisions have increased given the commentary on the improved quality of new loan loans. So this is to do with the ratio of loans that are in those different categories. So stage three has gone down a bit. Stage two has gone down a bit, but but stage one has gone up. And that's that's good news and reflects some of the excellent collection work as things get back up to date in certain cases and therefore, it's a stage one provision rather than a stage two or stage three provisions which have both gone down a bit. Thank you. Anthony, Chris, Graham and Ed, thank you so much. And I think for every question that's coming, you've given a response. Thank you for that and thank you to the investors for submitting questions and perfect timing with two minutes before the close, so that's great. I know, Anthony, that investor feedback is important to you and the company. We'll shortly redirect investors to provide you with their thoughts and expectations. But I guess perhaps before doing so, I could just perhaps turn to you for a few closing comments. Well, first of all, to thank you and most important of all, the investors for coming on the call. We find these occasions, both with investors and with institutional investors and analysts, extremely useful in terms of getting new ideas, doing their reaction to the the current trends in the business, and enabling us to stand back and have a look at the business with with obviously refreshed eyes. And this afternoon has been no exception to that. It's been extremely valuable. Thank you so much for everybody taking the time and trouble to come and contribute, and thanks very much, Mark, an investor meat company, for making it possible. Thank you. No problem. Thank you indeed to Anthony and the rest of the management team from S and U. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as we'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of SNU plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session, and good afternoon to you all.