American CIT Group has posted a second quarter profit of $142.1m (€109m), marking the equipment finance giant’s second consecutive quarterly profit after emerging from bankruptcy at the end of last year.
The result is an improvement on CIT’s Q1 profit figure of $97.3m, and represents earnings of 71 cents per share.
In the equivalent reporting period one year ago, just four months before the group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, CIT lost $1.7bn.
Former Merrill Lynch chief executive John Thain, who was appointed to manage CIT in February, announced following the posting of results that the group would pay down around $1bn in high-cost debt, after which it would begin refinancing the remaining $3bn.
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In addition to these repayments, Thain outlined intentions to shrink CIT’s balance sheet by offering “smaller, safer, more durable” loans, and by selling off non-core assets – a process already begun with the sale of CIT’s Australian and New Zealand arms.
