Sunny forecast

ING Lease Polska concluded leasing contracts worth zł.712.7 million in the first quarter of this year, which represented a 560-percent year-on-year increase. This helped the company increase its market share from six to 11 percent. "We have finalized a number of large real-estate deals we had been working on for some time," Krzysztof Bielecki, president of ING Lease and ING Car Lease, explained. Real-estate leasing contracts amounted to more than zł.470 million, over 66 percent of the total value of contracts - making ING Lease the market leader in the sector.

The remaining zł.240 million worth of contracts were in the vehicles and industrial-machines sector, which the company wants to develop significantly. The former accounts for 17.4 percent of the firm's sales, while the latter makes up 16.3 percent. In the first quarter of 2006, the two amounted to just over a quarter of all contracts.

Bielecki disclosed that in the future the company wants an increasing number of revenue to come from the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector. "We will be more active in this field - the SME sector is growing fast, thanks to the economic boom," he said. Currently, ING Lease is negotiating contracts worth zł.765 million, of which zł.265 million will come from small and medium-sized firms.

These potential deals and the positive Q1 results have led the company to increase its predicted value of leasing contracts for the year. "We were planning zł.1 billion, but now we'll have to raise it to zł.1.5 billion," Bielecki declared.

The other company belonging to ING Lease Holding, ING Car Lease, increased the number of cars in its fleet by 24 percent year-on-year, and currently is leasing or managing a fleet of 4,229 cars. It posted a revenue of zł.11.06 million with a profit of zł.4.2 million. ING Lease noted zł.75.4 million in revenue and zł.38.5 million in profit.