New business investment and weak foreign exchange rates hurt IPF results

The Leeds-based group said pre-tax profit fell from £12.7m to £10.4m after a £2m investment in new businesses and a £2.6m hit from weaker foreign exchange rates.

The group said it is addressing the slowdown in its European home credit businesses and saw improvement in the first quarter.

It reported good credit quality and said annualised impairment as a percentage of revenue was stable at 27.5 per cent.

Chief executive Gerard Ryan said: “Our focus on delivering improved growth has started to bear fruit.

“We are addressing the slowdown in our European home credit businesses reported during the fourth quarter of 2014 and delivered a progressive improvement in credit issued in most markets during the first quarter.”

As previously announced, Christopher Rodrigues retired as chairman at the group’s AGM yesterday.

Mr Ryan said: “I would like to thank Christopher Rodrigues for his strong leadership and expertise in shaping IPF into a robust international business and I look forward to working with Dan O’Connor to take the business on to its next stage of development.”

He said that under Mr Rodrigues, the group has developed into a much larger, more profitable and robust business.

Mr O’Connor joined the IPF board in January.

“We are confident of making further good progress during the year,” added Mr Ryan.

Analysts at Liberum said: “We believe increasing competition poses significant challenges for IPF and given the desire to grow the loan book, we could see slippage in credit quality over the next 18 to 24 months.

“We like the long-term growth story but are concerned about short-term performance.”