Fellow Finance issued a profit warning on Thursday, December 2nd. The company now expects revenue in 2021 to be at previous year levels and the result to be clearly unprofitable. Previously the company expected slight growth compared to 2020 and for the result to be slightly unprofitable. The lowered revenue guidance is driven by the relative growth in lower margin business financing and lower interest income from a reduction of the Company’s subsidiary’s, Lainaamo’s, loan portfolio. The profitability is greatly affected by transaction costs relating to the combination agreement with Evli Bank Plc, which are estimated to be around EUR 950,000 in 2021. Profitability is further affected by growth investments.
Loan volumes continuing steady growth
In relation to our earlier estimates, the main change is due to the expected transaction costs, which are clearly higher than we had anticipated, while our 2021 revenue growth estimates are down by a few percentage points. Although profitability is affected by the non-recurring transaction costs the underlying business appears to be performing quite decently. Monthly facilitated loan volumes have surpassed EUR 20m in the past few months, although fee income growth has been slower due to stronger growth in business financing. Should the merger be completed as planned and focus shift to balance sheet lending, the growth would also start to show in profitability figures.
BUY with a target price of EUR 3.5 (3.8)
Excluding the one-off costs, Fellow Finance is showing rather good progress and exhibits profitability upside, should the merger be completed as planned. In light of the near-term challenges, however, we adjust our TP to EUR 3.5 (3.8) with our BUY-rating intact.
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