FE Credit valuation 40 percent above industry average

With a deal value of $1.37 billion for a 49 percent stake, Japan’s SMBC Consumer Finance has put the consumer lender’s price-to-book (P/B) ratio at 3.4, according to a report by financial data provider FiinGroup.

The price-to-book (P/B) ratio, which measures the market’s valuation of a company relative to its book value, is nearly 40 percent higher than the average of four deals involving consumer lending companies in the last five years.

These deals include Japan’s Credit Saison spending $39.1 million for a 49 percent stake in HDFinance of HDBank and Japan’s Shinsei Bank spending $37.3 million for a similar stake in MCredit of MBBank.

FiinGroup said that the valuation for FE Credit is appropriate as it has the highest share of the consumer finance market at nearly 46 percent.

The company managed to post financial figures higher than industry average last year despite Covid-19 impacts, the report said.

FE Credit has 20,000 outlets and 13,000 staff nationwide. The company recorded a pre-tax profit of VND3.87 trillion ($168 million) last year, down 16 percent from 2019.