Contact Financial Holding, Egypt's leading non-bank financial services provider, announced that its financing portfolio rose to EGP 19.7bn, up from EGP 13.7bn during the comparative period of last year. This came in the company's consolidated financial results for the first nine months of 2023 announced on Tuesday. The company achieved significant growth in its financing portfolio, net profits, and key business segments, demonstrating its resilience and adaptability in the face of challenging market conditions. Net profits also surged by 33% to EGP 405m, demonstrating the company's resilience and the effectiveness of its growth strategies. Commenting on the results, management said: "Despite the challenging conditions that have persisted since the start of the year, we are happy to report another strong set of financial and operational results which continue to highlight the success of our mitigation, growth, and value-creation strategies as well as the resilience of our market. Looking at our results in more detail, we have witnessed strong portfolio growth at both our Auto and Truck segments, as they continued to benefit from both the gradual recovery of their respective markets and the significant price increases witnessed over the past year." They added that the company's consumer financing segment continued to report strong growth backed by their rapidly expanding merchant network, our broader and more diversified product offering, as well as their increased market penetration. Moreover, the ContactNow app continued to ramp up in line with expectations, with the number of new registrations since January reaching 200,000 and those since inception reaching an impressive 504 thousand in total. "Meanwhile, our Contactcars.com platform continued to strengthen and support the Auto Financing segment and has also started to effectively monetize both classifieds ads and dealer subscriptions. In parallel, our insurance division continued to expand at an impressive rate as it continued to effectively leverage its increased market penetration, enhanced cross-selling capabilities, and ramped up product offerings. Finally, at our debt capital markets division, we have completed a number of landmark issuances during the first nine months of the year, including the market's first hybrid Consumer Finance and Auto Credit bond. The issuances, which were concluded in the midst of a difficult operating environment, demonstrate our unparalleled ability to tap into capital markets and safeguard Contact's liquidity requirements in spite of the prevailing market conditions." Furthermore, the company's Auto Loans and Consumer Finance segments were the division's top performers during 9M-2023, as they reported y-o-y new financing growth of 93% and 59%, respectively. Growth in the Auto Loans segment was driven by the gradual easing of import restrictions at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, coupled with increased car prices. In parallel, the Consumer Finance segment's expansion was supported by enhanced customer acquisition capabilities including new physical touchpoints, a broader product offering, and the ramp-up of the ContactNow app, which since the second half of 2022 has been under the management of Contact Creditech.
