Used to work with a guy who owned a pawnshop that surprise, surprise, ended up with some goods that turned out to have been stolen. Long story short he ends up in court and the magistrate asks the value of said stolen items to which he shot back “…with respect, are you buying, or are you selling”.

Cashies has taken this whole pandemic thing well. They have continued to resell stuff and as well as being a huge payday lender. The lending has expanded into cars now too (via a subsidiary) with total lending now around half the revenues.

Incredibly there are over 700 stores many as franchises, with a little more than 20% of them in Australia. Plans are underway to bring at least some of the franchised stores back in house, as well as open new outlets.

Having never been into one of the stores, my next step in looking into this will be to visit one. Am already thinking as I have never been to one, I’m not the target demographic. Will keep an open mind.

The company appears to be well capitalised, with an existing $150M loan facility maturing in December 2022 drawn to a minimum level of $70M. Cash on the balance sheet is circa $80M.

Suspect this is not one for me, but will look out for the full year results.

Cashies is continuing to execute, having seen strong Q1 lending pushing past the historically busy Christmas, posting 21% growth in the loan book.

Traditionally a “small loan” (read payday) lender the gross loan book has increased to ~$204M with the greatest growth coming from its medium amount credit contracts which are up 84% from last year to ~$72M.

Losses from the loan book continue to be less than 5% on the back of increased scrutiny in applications – under 25% are approved.

Conversely, a new PayAdvance earned waged access (EWA) pilot product continues to expand, with 70% of approved loans being new customers. There are plans for a national rollout of the product this quarter.

The company continues to look at acquisition and development opportunities as well as other product offerings.

It might be the market they play in, but none of the reasonably sensible execution is appearing in the share price.