Silver Bird says confident of turning around

Saw this business news posted, Silver Bird confident of returning to the black.

• Group executive director Derec Ching said the group had been registering stronger sales in the last few months after a product crisis from September to January.
  
  “We are recovering, and certainly doing better now,” he said after the group AGM yesterday.
  
  Silver Bird registered a net loss of RM18.24mil for the first three months ended Jan 31 from RM1.21mil in the previous corresponding period. Ching said the losses largely reflected the crisis’ impact on the company’s bottom line in the first quarter of FY07.
  
  “Q107 was not a normal quarter for us and not reflective of our normal performance. Apart from the crisis, we were investing heavily to start up our Singapore operations,” he said.
  
  However, Ching said based on rising sales of bakery and consumer food products, and coupled with new launches in the current year, the group was “reasonably confident” it would be able to turn around within the remaining three quarters.
  
  Silver Bird recently secured an exclusive supply contract from a leading player in Singapore to supply bakery products to retailers in Singapore. This will help turn its Singapore operations around this year.
  
  Managing director Jackson Tan said the group would embark on a multi-million ringgit advertising and promotion (A&P) campaign earliest by July to drive up sales and regain the market share it used to enjoy.
  
  “It will be a major A&P campaign running for more than six months,” he said.
  
  He said as part of the group’s efforts to preserve High-5 products as the main driver for the group’s consumer division, Silver Bird would be appointing a famous personality as its product ambassador.
  
  Among other things, the group will introduce what Tan describes as innovative consumer products this year. “These will help us regain market share and bring back our glory days,” he said.
  
  On the group’s alliance with the AmBank group to offer micro lending services to small businesses, Ching said the parties had finalised the product, called AmMikro, and would be rolling it out soon.
  
  “We are only an agent that will facilitate AmBank in the distribution of this product via our distribution channel,” he said.

Me? I really do not understand why this company is diversifying into the micro lending business. It's own bread business is running into huge losses and this group wants to diversify its group business and mess around in a totally unrelated business! Why can't it fix its core business first?

For past Silver Bird postings: click here

• Silver Bird
• Silver Bird: Part II
• Silver Bird: Part III
• Silver Bird: Part IV
• Silver Bird: Part V
• Silver Bird: Part VI
• Silver Bird: Part VII
• That Silver Birdie..
• Silver Bird: Part VIII
• Shocking Silver Bird?
• Regarding Silver Bird Yet Again
• Silver Bird?
• That 'Roti' Man