UPDATE: Private & Commercial In Funding Hunt To Grow Revenue

(Adds executive comments, analyst comment and share price.) By Rachael Gormley Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES LONDON (Dow Jones)--U.K. finance house Private & Commercial Finance Group PLC (PCF.LN) Tuesday said it is on the hunt for new funding that would allow it to write more business, improve operational gearing and take advantage of acquisition opportunities in the specialist finance sector. "There are great opportunities but they are somewhat held back by the availability of senior debt," Chief Executive Scott Maybury told Dow Jones Newswires. "Banks are still being extremely cautious on lending to quite a number of sectors. Financial services is one of them." Maybury said P&C, which provides vehicle and plant equipment finance, is looking to double its existing GBP120 million banking facilities by getting funding from new banks, including institutions in markets like India, Australia and China which have been less affected by the global credit squeeze. Its existing main banks--which include Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS.LN), Barclays PLC (BARC.LN), Lloyds TSB and Singers Corporate Asset Finance--are said to be supportive but will not be increasing funds themselves. However, the firm said it is also considering other forms of raising funds such as the bond market, securitization and debenture stock. "Funding could take one of several forms," Maybury said. P&C said if the funds were found, it would be able to process "substantially increased" levels of new business and maintain a much larger loan book with very little increase in costs. During the year P&C wrote GBP43.4 million of new business compared with GBP60.6 million in the previous year--a combination of a cautious outlook and restricted funding. "There's good quality business just waiting to be written. We just need the funds," said Maybury. P&C would also use its planned, expanded firepower to make acquisitions of portfolios in the specialty finance sector, which has arguably been battered in the past few years as smaller independent players lost access to debt and faced higher costs, while major banks have been restructuring their business and their risks. The company Tuesday posted a pretax profit of GBP528,000 for the year ended March 31, compared with GBP263,000 in the same period a year earlier, bolstered by lower costs. Revenue fell slightly to GBP60.2 million from GBP62.9 million. Analysts at WH Ireland, which has a "speculative buy" rating on the stock, said that while they don't expect access to funding to be resolved near-term, they don't expect it to worsen either. "Profitability could recover very sharply, assuming P&C can gain access to additional funding lines," they said. At 0944 GMT, shares were up 0.13 pence, or 1.5%, at 8.75 pence, while the wider FTSE AIM index was down 1%. -By Rachael Gormley, Dow Jones Newswires; 44-20-7842-9308; rachael.gormley@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 29, 2010 05:58 ET (09:58 GMT)