To our Stockholders, Customers & Friends:
2009 was a good year for the Varilease companies.
We were very successful in carrying out our business
plan for the year in an environment that was extremely
challenging for our industry. I would
like to share a few highlights with you:
- Total company lease originations were approximately
$175,000,000.
- Consolidated pre-tax income increased again
over the prior year.
- Overall liquidity more than doubled giving us
excellent ability to fund our transactions.
- We significantly reduced our exposure in the
small ticket (small business) leasing business
as we felt the credit risk of current market transactions
were not commensurate with yields.
- Varilease was once again honored by Monitor
Magazine and ranked in the largest 100 leasing
companies in the United States.
- Separately, last year we were also ranked
4th nationally in terms of privately held leasing
companies…up from 9th in the prior year
Moving forward to 2010. . .
From our perspective 2010 will be a similar but perhaps slightly improved version
of 2009. Our business plan for the first half of the year will essentially
be a continuation of the same practices, policies, and credit standards that
served us well in 2009. We are planning on quarterly business segment reviews
beginning with the 3rd quarter to make determinations as to whether “it
is time” to expand in certain market areas or look at new ones. US business
volume is still down considerably from traditional levels and we see that continuing
for quite a while. We continue to see new and increased opportunity that wasn't
available to us in past years as a result of bank constrained liquidity, retrenched
activity from the large finance companies, and the disappearance of a number
of our competitors.
Our approach to the current market will be the same
as it was in 2009….a continuation of conservative
credit practices coupled with our healthy liquidity
which enables us to structure sensible transactions
for both our company and our customers.
Thank you once again for your continued support.
- Robert VanHellemont, CEO
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