Sundaram Home Finance mulls to raise Rs 2,500 crore

Sundaram Home Finance, a wholly owned subsidiary of non-banking finance company Sundaram Finance Ltd, is mulling to raise Rs 2,500 crore to fund its growth plans, the company said on Saturday.

Sundaram Home Finance has declared its financial performance for the fourth quarter ending March 31, 2021.

According to a statement, the net profit stood at Rs 36 60 crore during the period under review.

The city-based company registered a net profit of Rs 82 crore during the corresponding period last year, including an one-time exceptional item of Rs 60 crore on account of write- back of deferred tax liability.

"Hence the net profit for the two periods are not comparable," the statement said.

Disbursements for the quarter under review grew to Rs 459.38 crore from Rs 389.60 crore during the same quarter previous year.

For the year ending March 31, 2021, the net profit was Rs 191 crore against Rs 218 crore in the same period last fiscal. The net profit included the one-time exceptional item of Rs 60 crore and the net profits for the two periods are not comparable.

The total disbursements made were Rs 1,254.05 crore against Rs 2,112.09 crore registered year ago.

"To fund the growth plans, the company is looking to raise Rs 2,500 crore this year through a mix of debt instruments and bank funding," the statement said.

Commenting on the financial performance, Sundaram Home Finance MD Lakshminarayanan Duraiswamy said, "While it was a gloomy start to FY '21, marked by lockdown in the first couple of months, the latter half of the year panned out well and we saw a gradual but certain recovery." The real estate sector showed remarkable tenacity in 2020 against unprecedented odds, he said.

"Over the five-month period between November 2020 and March 21, we saw demand getting back to pre-COVID levels. The fourth quarter was the silver lining of the last financial year with return of customer confidence," he said.

On the outlook, he said FY '22 was supposed to be the year of recovery.

April started out well in terms of disbursements but currently there is a great deal of uncertainty over the extent and intensity of the COVID second wave.

"There will be a momentary halt in the upward trend as we are likely to witness truncated housing sales and scrapped property projects. However, as the recovery of 2020 showed, the market is likely to emerge stronger," he said.