Source : THE EDGE MALAYSIA

"It has met with good response", he says. More than half of MBf's turnover is from its trading activities, mostly in the South Pacific Islands under MBf Carpenters. Under Lourdenadin, MBf Carpenters has turned profitable. In 2001, it was loss-making but last year it re-ported a profit after tax of RM20 million on a revenue of RM1.2 billion.

"Carpenters is going to be another core business of MBf", says Lourdenadin.

Since taking over MBf five years ago, he has succeeded in getting the company back on track. He has disposed of assets and cut costs, and has used the proceeds to pare down debts from about RM1.7 billion to about RM100 million today.

Aside from this RM100 million legacy debt, MBf has another RM5OO million debt, most of which was taken on to fund the operations of the company, including its credit card business. MBf had a debt-to-equity ratio of about six times at the time Lourdenadin took over the company.

"We have managed to bring that down to about 1.9 times. As we move ahead, there will always be debt but it will be at manageable levels", he says.

"MBf has got out of most of its troubles save for a few unresolved issues, which should be ironed out in the next 18 months", adds Lourdenadin.

The unresolved issues include the Alamanda development project in Kulim, which has gone into receivership. MBf also is in dispute regarding some outstanding loans with MBf Corp Bhd, which is still under the Loy family.

Going forward, Lourdenadin will have to get MBf to show much improved results. Standard & Poor's has a "sell" recommendation on the stock, stating that while MBf's aggressive marketing campaigns should help attract credit cardholders to spend, stiff competition in the industry is likely to continue to crimp profit margins.

Hence, Lourdenadin's task will be to show that he is able to enhance the profitability of the company from its core operations of credit card services and its trading businesses. He says for FY2007, the company should be able to repeat its financial performance of last year.

"We will still have to spend aggressively on growing the business, especially the credit card business", he says.