The stock price of Manappuram Finance was down in trade post their Q1 earnings with assets under management (AUM) at a 6-quarter low and gold tonnage at an 18-quarter low. At the time of publishing, the stock was trading at Rs 169.15 on the NSE.

Throwing more light on the quarterly performance and the outlook in terms of loan growth and gold tonnage, VP Nandakumar, MD and CEO told CNBC-TV18, that they are continuing with growth of 10-15 percent. “Now onwards, we are expecting growth of 10-15 percent and for FY22, whatever I have told the market about our growth expectations, we are confident of achieving that both in tonnage terms as well as loan growth.”

We have to better manage the prices of gold. High loan-to-value (LTV) products are not there in our books. We were able to move out of that and at the same time, maintain the yield at the same level, he added.

Talking about auctions, he said, “If you were to look at our disbursals, our auctions remained below 2 percent in spite of the long-drawn pandemic, which is not high.”

The company currently is at 63 percent LTV. In the past quarter, gold auctions for the company were roughly around Rs 1500 crore and in the previous quarter, they were at around Rs 400 crore. Nandakumar said, “The gold auctions will be contained around 1.5-2 percent maximum, for the whole of the year. The LTV has come down and now that prices have come down, our LTV has adjusted to a new price. So in the coming quarter, our auction will be very less.”

On NIMs, he said, “Our yield will come down by 1-2 percent but NIMs will be protected because our overall cost is coming down, our opex is also coming down.”

On the non-gold portfolio that is the MFI portfolio, the company has been providing around Rs 90 crore in terms of provisioning but the company said collections are back to 90-95 percent. Nandakumar said, the company has been very conservative in their provisioning. “Our policy had been after 180-days overdue, we used to write off. Over 90 days, we used to have provision of 50 percent and complete write off after 180 days. We are continuing with the same provisioning,” he said, adding that in the coming quarters it will come down drastically.

For the full interview, watch the video

(Edited by : Dipika Ghosh)