ASA International Group PLC (ASAI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, good afternoon or good evening, dear investors, lenders, potential investors, raters and all interested parties to ASHA International. Warm welcome to our webcast on the H1 results presentation for 2023. and we're happy to take you along our results as well as to the outlook. I'm here in London in the room with Tanvir Rahman, our CFO, with Misha Asink, our Chief Investor Relations, and also chief accountant. And we're happy to go through the presentation with the results. Also on our webcast, you will find our press release as well as business updates, and the presentation given will also be shared there. Starting on the highlights of the performance, we can summarize that the operational performance has improved. And at the same time, we face disappointing financial performance due to external factors mainly. If you look to the number of clients, then as you know, we do have a deliberate shrinking strategy in India. And that's mostly why the total number of clients went down in combination with the impact of Nigeria, where there were elections and demonetization. The number of branches is growing slightly, and if you look to our pre-tax profit, it's 13.8 million, and the net profit being 3.7 million. The OLP growth has been very good in Pakistan, Philippines, Ghana, and Tanzania, especially in local currency, where if you look to the local currency OLP growth, our portfolio grew with plus 6%. So here are the dollar numbers, and they're being tempered by currency depreciation. If you look to the par, it has improved to the end of 2022, and our current par 30, so portfolio at risk, overdue payments more than 30 days amounts to 3.8%. Our ECL expenses have gone down significantly since COVID and now are 2.8 million, with the majority taken for India. The u...