|
A company spokeswoman said the numbers were taken from Egg's internally prepared management accounts and showed a profit after all expenses.
"This is bang on what we said we were going to do at the time of our float in June 2000 -- we made a commitment to break even in quarter 4 of this year," she said. She explained that while the last quarter had seen tremendous customer growth for Egg, the bank hadn't seen any direct benefit from the collapse of rival Internet bank First-e, which was closed by parent Banque d'Escompte earlier this year.
As of December 10, Egg said it had a total net customer base of 1.92 million, around 7 percent of whom were acquired during this quarter. Egg said it had acquired some 569,000 net new customers already this year, outstripping its customer growth last year. The company is counting on the continued growth of banking by Internet, which a recent Datamonitor report said would attract more than 57 million European users by 2005.
Egg, which is 79 percent owned by Prudential Plc, raised some STG150 million when it floated on 12 June 2000. The company told ElectricNews.Net it still has cash reserves from the float, despite the fact that market sentiment has since turned against banks that operate only on the Internet, without any physical branches. Last year AIB abandoned plans for its own standalone Internet bank, and in October this year Bank of Ireland closed its Net-only offshore bank, Fsharp. The closure of the Internet-only First-e bank led to some 245 job losses in Ireland, where back-end operations for the bank were located.
But Egg indicated that it sees sustainable profits for the future, driven in large part by its unique credit card business. For a six-month period Egg offers 0 percent interest on balance transfers and on new purchases. This means customers can consolidate other debt onto an Egg card and essentially get an interest-free loan to make credit card purchases for six months.
Egg said the approach of the Christmas season had encouraged many new customers to move to the Egg card, which had some 1.2 million customers and became a profitable business as of the beginning of October.
The company has no plans to broach the Irish market, although it did strike a partnership with Microsoft that will let Egg move into the French and German markets, promoting its Egg Invest product via MSN.
Egg's preliminary results for the year ending 31 December 2001 will be released on 25 February 2002.
|
