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LAMBERTI'S TRANSACTION CAPITAL TARGETS R500M

BUSINESS LIVE: 13 May 2012

After his success as head of Massmart, it was expected that Mark Lamberti would turn up with an interesting new project.

Transaction Capital, of which Lamberti is CEO, hopes to raise about R500-million from its listing on the JSE next month. It will use the proceeds to service debt and strengthen the balance sheet.

The announcement comes weeks after private equity manager Ethos increased its stake in the group to 10% after investing R100-million.

At the same time, Futuregrowth invested R340-million in equity.

The group owns MBD Credit Solutions, a company that collects debt for companies like Woolworths, Truthworths, Edgars and Jet. Revenue from that business, combined with that of its credit risk management company PIC Solutions, stood at R635-million in the year to September while profits before tax were R91-million.

Transaction Capital, which provides financial services in markets segments that were historically ignored by traditional banks, provides unsecured lending to consumers through its subsidiary, Bayport.

The company generated R1.4-million in revenue for the group in the previous financial year.

Lamberti, who owns 7% of Transaction Capital, is not perturbed about the current noise over unsecured loans.

"Unsecured lending in the country is about R110-billion and our book is just under R3-billion, so we can afford to be very selective about who we grant credit to and how we grant credit," he said.

Lamberti spent the past four years putting in place strategies, structure and governance and aligning himself with a strong army of executives that started some of the subsidiaries - a move reminiscent of his heydays when he engineered a retail company that is now known as Massmart, worth about R34-billion today.

He said: "My colleagues and I have all built our careers on making astute acquisitions and integrating them in businesses that we are involved with."

Asked whether there are any imminent deals, he said they needed to catch their breaths for a short while first.

The group is poised to benefit from the taxi industry when the national taxi fleet is renewed as the current fleet is very old.

Subsidiary SA Taxi provides lending services and insurance products to more than 20000 taxi operators, and it is likely to increase its market share in that market.

Through Paycorp, the group puts about R22-billion through its 4000 off-bank ATMs every year.

Lamberti said the group was finding more remote sites to put up ATMs to complement those they already had at filling stations and retail shops.

Overall income for the company grew 30% to R3.6-billion with loans and advances swelling 18% to R6.7-billion.

Non-interest revenue rose 17% to R1.8-billion.

Headline earnings a share gained 45% to 69.6c.

The upbeat Lamberti said even though he was still the chairman of Massmart, Transaction Capital was his total focus, and it took 12 hours of his day.

"I am having fun, working with some exciting, talented people," he said.