OREANDA-NEWS. National Rating Agency has affirmed its national scale ‘AA+’ credit rating on Europlan PJSC. The outlook for the rating has been revised to Stable from Positive. NRA assigned its first-time ‘AA’ credit rating to the company on Jan. 30, 2012 and later raised it to ‘AA+’ with a positive outlook.

The rating affirmation reflects Europlan’s leading market position, healthy business development in its market segment, strong profit margin and profitability enabling equity growth, the fact that its net interest margin is maintained despite the rising funding costs, as well as the company’s well-matched assets and liability tenures, high-quality assets, impeccable credit history, well-developed funding base, loan portfolio diversification by creditor and low currency risk. The company’s competitive strengths include a large proportion of long-standing customers, suggesting a high quality of its services. In addition, NRA notes Europlan’s strong corporate governance practices and the intent of the company’s sole shareholder to offer its stake (25% minus 1 share) through an IPO on the Moscow Exchange. This might improve Europlan’s business standing, make for its transparency and facilitate its access to capital markets going forward.

The rating is constrained by the company’s business concentration on vehicle leasing and the fact that the slowing down of its new business line affects its leasing portfolio growth rate(these trends are typical of the Russian leasing market in general and its vehicle segment in particular). NRA also notes the remaining risk of increasing funding costs, which threatens Europlan’s operating efficiency in the current period, characterized by the negative trends in the commercial motor transport and Russia’s worsening macroeconomic performance. All these factors have contributed to the rating outlook revision to Stable.

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