Turners tips pretax profit rise of 26%

AUCKLAND: Turners Automotive Group told shareholders at yesterday’s annual meeting it expected to lift its fullyear pretax earnings by as much as 26% as it benefited from a series of recent acquisitions and increasing vertical integration.

New Zealand’s largest secondhand vehicle retailer said trading so far this financial year was in line with or slightly above board expectations and it expected pretax earnings of $29 million to $31 million in the year ending March 31, 2018, up from $24.6 million in the 2017 financial year.

‘‘We operate in a growth sector. Automotive sales continued to increase, with 2016 being the highest year of New Zealand vehicle registrations recorded in the past 10 years, and with that comes a corresponding uplift in demand from automotive finance and insurance products,’’ chairman Grant Baker said.

The company was benefiting from a series of acquisitions, including the Buy Right Cars Group in August last year and the Autosure Insurance business in December.

Within the automotive retail unit, which accounted for twothirds of earnings, it continued to focus more on selling to retail versus wholesale customers, which was driving yield improvement, the company said.

Including the benefit from the acquisitions, pretax profit in the automotive retail unit was up an annual 60% in the first four months of the year. If that benefit was stripped out, the pretax profit was 21% higher.

Within the insurance unit, pretax profit, including the benefit from Autosure, was up 547%.

Within the finance division, pretax profit was up 13% at present.