Bangkok Commercial Asset Management (BAM) expects to buy assets worth Bt19 billion from financial institutions this year.
The company also hopes to gain from the expected boom in the property market this year as demand for land has started to go up.
Bunyong Visatemongkolchai, president of BAM, said that this year the company expected to buy Bt15 billion non-performing loans (NPL) and Bt4 billion non-performing assets (NPA) from financial institutions. Last year the company bought Bt16.2 billion NPLs and Bt3.87 billion NPAs from financial institutions.
The two financial institutions, which mainly sold assets to the company, were TMB Bank - Bt14.69 billion NPLs and Bt1.56 billion NPAs - and Phayathai Asset Management Company (PAMC), which sold Bt1.87 billion worth of NPAs.
BAM has total assets of Bt71.87 billion, not different from 2008, total debt of Bt44.5 billion, decreasing slightly from Bt45.7 billion in 2009, giving the company a net profit of Bt2.43 billion compared to a net profit of Bt2.24 billion last year, Bunyong said
Meanwhile, its debt-to-equity (D/E) ratio is very low at 1.63 times, giving the company enough room to buy more assets if compared with commercial banks, which have a D/E ratio at nine times, Bunyong said.
The Bank of Thailand (BOT) has aimed to cut NPLs of commercial banks to not more than five per cent, or Bt379.9 billion this year, from 5.34 per cent, or Bt405 billion, in 2008.
The company could buy NPLs worth Bt25.8 billion from commercial banks on the basis of the outstanding loans of commercial banks. Currently outstanding loans of commercial banks amount to Bt7.5 trillion.
He said the company had the potential to buy assets above its target of Bt19 billion as it had a low D/E ratio.
Sumate Maneewattana, senior executive vice president of BAM, said the property market this year was likely to boom as many big developers had started to approach the company since the end of last year to buy land for their new projects.
BAM expects to collect Bt5.99 billion debt and sell assets worth Bt6.01 billion this year. It spent Bt300 million in improving 15 projects nationwide for selling.
Bunyong said property prices were expected to increase by 15 per cent in 2010 in line with the higher cost of construction material.
