10:14 am, March 14, 2018
MARSHALL Motor Holdings CEO Daksh Gupta has hailed an ‘outstanding set of numbers’ as his company has achieved increased revenue, profit and sales, despite challenging market conditions.
Speaking to Car Dealer Magazine, Gupta (pictured) said: ‘I’m absolutely delighted. It’s an outstanding set of numbers, with record results at both revenue and profit before tax levels. We’ve outperformed the market, as well as taking significant steps to prepare the group for the future.
‘We enjoyed overall growth across all of our revenue streams, with new up one per cent, used up seven per cent and aftersales up 2.3 per cent, and our new retail units were significantly ahead of the market, which was down 6.8 per cent.
‘Used units up 5.2 per cent was particularly pleasing as well when you consider the outperformance in new and the used market being down 1.1 per cent – all of that led to our retail segment being up more than 20 per cent, so very pleasing from a strategic perspective. The disposal of Marshall Leasing for £42.5m also meant that, on the balance sheet, all of our debts have been eliminated.’
Gupta went on to explain how he feels that these positive results have set Marshall in a very good position for the future.
‘Looking to the future in terms of growth, we have a very clear strategy,’ he continued. ‘Amazingly, we’ve now bought and sold close to 140 businesses in the last decade. We want to carry on growing with the existing brand partners that we’ve got and we want to grow to scale with those brand partners.
‘Clearly, the market has been a little more challenging, but our results don’t reflect that, so we’ll pursue positive opportunities, but we’re not in a rush to do anything – it’s as and when the right opportunities come along and make financial sense for our shareholders.’
Also speaking to Car Dealer Magazine, Mark Raban, chief financial officer at Marshall Motor Holdings, added: ‘We’re very well-positioned on the balance sheet. Net debt at the end of 2016 was £119m and that’s been pretty much eliminated.
‘We’ve got a very good freehold property portfolio – around half of our properties now are freehold, so they’re on the balance sheet at £116m and that’s a transformation if you think about where we were back in April 2015, when about a third of our properties were freehold. The value has risen from about £28m through to where we are today.
‘I think acquisitions come in all different shapes and sizes and I think, whatever comes along, we’ll be very disciplined about appraising them and looking at them, but I think we have the flexibility to go a number of different ways, large or small, given where we are with the balance sheet – it’s filling me with confidence in terms of what we can do moving forward.’
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