Bunas Finance wants 66% profit hike

JAKARTA (JP): Publicly listed PT Bunas Finance Indonesia wants a 66 percent net profit increase this year, to Rp 55 billion from Rp 33.1 billion in 1996.

President of the firm, Francis Lay Sioe Ho, said it had posted a 134 percent increase in net profit to Rp 9.78 billion in the first quarter of 1997, from Rp 4.16 billion in the same period last year.

He said total revenue also rose 67 percent to Rp 61.06 billion in the first quarter, from Rp 36.37 billion last year.

Bunas Finance, the multi-finance arm of the Ongko Group, expects the consumer finance sector to contribute about 42 percent to the company's net profit in 1997, leasing 50 percent, and factoring 8 percent.

"We expect the contribution from the consumer finance to increase to 55 percent next year," he said after the company's annual shareholders' meeting yesterday.

He said the company mostly financed purchases of four- and two-wheel vehicles.

The company financed 4,000 purchasing contracts of two-wheel vehicles a month last year with an average value of about Rp 3 million.

"We expect to double the contracts to 8,000 next year," he said.

He said that last year the company financed 2,000 purchasing contracts of four-wheel vehicles a month.

"The average total value of each four-wheel vehicle contract is about Rp 30 million," he said.

Yesterday's meeting also approved the company's plan to pay out Rp 7.2 billion in dividends or Rp 125 a share, Lay said.

He said Bunas Finance, which had total assets of Rp 1.16 trillion as of March 1997, planned to invest about Rp 20 billion in information technology.

"To improve the company's customer service across the country," he said. (09)