recovery specialist, is likely to meet expectations of group
earnings for the financial year ending December 31 2007 despite the
liquidity crisis plaguing financial markets, the company
said.
Cattles, which provides working capital financing through its
factoring services, said client numbers in this division grew by 14
per cent to 731 in the current financial year, raising the value of
invoices factored by 28 per cent. However, its loan loss ratio rose
to 1.9 per cent from 1.2 per cent reported in 2006.
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Cattles’ invoice factoring business contributed £17.5m or 2 per
cent to group revenue in 2006.
On funding and liquidity, Cattles reported a healthy position in
its December 13 preclosing trading statement. It sustained its BBB
corporate rating with Fitch.
It kept an overall average maturity of committed funding facilities
to about five years and an average maturity for receivables of
about three years. During the year, Cattles raised a total of £533m
from the capital markets.
Average cost of borrowing has inched up slightly to 6.9 per cent
from 6.8 per cent in 2006. Cattles also obtained an £180m unsecured
bilateral bank facility from the Royal Bank of Scotland, priced at
25 bps above the group’s current average cost of bank
funding.
At the same time, Cattles redeemed a £125m bond that carried a
fixed coupon of 8.625 per cent.The only existing facility maturing
next year is a US$40m 7.15 per cent tranche of private placing
funding, redeemable in December 2008.
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By GlobalData“We remain confident that new debt funding required will continue
to be available to us in acceptable terms,” the company said.
As of November 30, Cattles’ gearing was 4.4 times, down from 5.2
times in 2006 and below its covenant limit of 6 times
