Lending Works targets profitability and £10m turnover in 2019
LENDING Works’ chief executive said the firm is targeting £10m in revenues this year and profitability “in the next few months”, after its latest annual results showed widening losses.
The peer-to-peer consumer lender reported a loss of just over £2.1m for the year ended 31 December 2018, up from £1.41m the previous year, which chief executive Nick Harding (pictured) attributed to a larger wage bill.
There is no requirement for businesses to report revenues in small company accounts, but Harding revealed that the firm saw revenues rise to £6.2m last year and is targeting £10m this year.
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He told Peer2Peer Finance News that “a £2.1m loss is minuscule in terms of what some firms spend” and said he expected Lending Works to achieve profitability in the next few months.
“Our biggest expense is salaries,” he said.
“We have a highly skilled team – I think our average salary is much higher than the UK average. But that’s what it takes to grow the business.
“Our vision is to be a game-changer in the consumer credit market.”
Lending Works develops all of its technology in-house and invests heavily in research and development of its platform, Harding said.
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The firm’s average number of employees rose to 33 in 2018 from 29 in 2017, according to Companies House filings. The extra staff were added to the administrative and operations teams.
During the course of 2018, Lending Works secured £2.8m of private equity investment, led by Maven Capital Partners. As such, the firm had total capital and reserves of £215,392 as of the end of 2018.
With regard to Brexit, Harding said that he was “naturally” hoping for a deal and predicted that leaving the EU without a deal could dampen investor inflows.
“We’re exploring additional institutional capital as an antidote to that,” he added.
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Lending Works had lent out just over £190m as of 31 July, according to the statistics page on its website. It has 6,040 active investors with an average account size of £26,609.