HGH - Heartland Group Holdings

[Master98]

What I am suggesting is that the NZ finance sector has gone through such a rough time that publishing the bare bones legal requiements on what the law requires may not be enough engender investor confidence. And this is an issue that all finance sector companies must face.

SNOOPY

make sense.

[percy]

Hopefully we may have some correct answers to so many questions shortly, as I rang the company and advised them of our discussion here on sharetrader.

CFO of Heartland,Craig Stephen returned my call.He told me they don't reply to blogs such as sharetrader.Told him I was disappointed to hear that.However, he said if any sharetraders had any questions he would be pleased to answer them .His phone number is [09] 9279219.

[percy]

Craig needs to get with the times ... ST is an active forum and not a blog.

Please ring and tell him that.!!!!
I would have thought a financial institution who was looking for a banking licence would be the first company to help sharetraders ,by posting reguarly,and correcting any posters who made mistakes.
Not helpful at all.I did tell him I am a shareholder.

[kizame]

Arrogance!!! I think that is a reflection also of PGC management.
A company that wants to grow,needs management expertise,but also good shareholder/customer relations,they need to be humble imop.
They need to provide whatever clarity they can, so that shareholders get a good understanding of the financial workings,or just provide that info in the first place.
Smaks of"We are way to good to give you little people that sort of info" or"we don't really want you digging there".

[Jaa]

A bank also needs excellent IT systems, not being able to tell the difference between a blog and NZ's top share trading forum is not a good start!

[Snoopy]

It could be there is some different definition of 'equity ratio' that Heartland is using that is not in accordance with the 'investorwords' definition. But unless someone can point out what that is I will stick with what 'investorwords' says.

Had another look at the Heartland FY2012 interim report. Found this comment on page 2

"Total equity was $360 million at 31 December 2011 compared to $296 million at 30 June 2011, which was an equity ratio of 15% to total assets (up from 14% at 30 June 2011)."

This shows my calculated figure for the equity ratio as at 31-12-2011 was absolutely correct. It also shows that the HNZ declared equity ratio on 14/03/2012 of 13.5% has declined to below what it was on 30-06-2011. And all this has happened in a sub three month period when the great wash out from the wind up of the government guarantee was thought (at least by me) to be over!

SNOOPY

[kizame]

Am ignorant as to the latest report,but could this drop in equity be an increase in lending?

[Snoopy]

Am ignorant as to the latest report,

No need to be

http://www.heartland.co.nz/_upload/r...ancials_LR.pdf

but could this drop in equity be an increase in lending?

Just be be clear HNZ's equity has not gone down, it has in fact gone up. The 'equity ratio' has gone down. Since assets include finance receivables your hunch is probably correct. Yes HNZ have more equity but if they have concommitant new lending going out proportionately faster than their own equity is increasing then that would weaken the equity ratio.

I think you are probably onto it kizame.

SNOOPY

[Snoopy]

I have been covering these hurdles out of my original order to better match the flow of this thread. But there is one more bankers test that HNZ must face.

4/ Single new customer group exposure (as a percentage of shareholder funds) <10%

This criterion may have lead to the downfall of PGGW Finance (PGF) as an independent entity. As at 31/12/2010 PGG had $126.7m of loans in the dairy sector from a total loan portfolio of $491.8m. Total Crafer loans from all institutions are reputedly $200m. PGF claim they are a 'junior partner' in the banking syndicate. But if the PGF exposure was say $40m, then as other loans were wound back those
Crafer loan interest is capitalized, Crafer farms might approach 10% of all PGF loans.

I can't find any information in the Heartland HY2012 interim report on customer concentration. Since one of the objectives of merging all the entities that formed Heartland together was to reduce the concentration of risk, I don't think it likely that a single customer has 10% or more of the balance of the loans outstanding.

The HNZ interim report does say that post merger, 40% of loans are now in the Canterbury region (note 11). That might mean regional volatility need be considered in future.

Result: PROBABLE PASS (interim report has insufficient information)

[percy]

According to 'investorwords' (www.investorwords.com) the equity ratio is defined as:

=(Total Equity)/(Total Assets)

Using numbers from the Heartland HY2012 report dated 31-12-2012, page 11

= $360.2m/$2380.5m = 15.1%

The declaration by Heartland on 14/03/2012 of an equity ratio of 13.5% represents a significant deterioration in this statistic. This has to be a worry as if the deterioration keeps up like this hopes of becoming bank will be extinguished in about 18 months. Shareholders would need to budget for a substantial capital raising before then. No warning bells ringing yet Percy?

SNOOPY

Should Heartland increase lending by 57% or 1370mil your figures would be 360.2m/3750.5m =9.6%.Still within Reserve bank equity ratio.
No allowance has been made for increasing profits which would increase total equity.