MINT Sees a Rebound in 2021 as Tourism Recovers, Showing ฿25Bn Cash on Hand

MINT sees a rebound in 2021, expecting revenue to improve compared to the year 2020 as tourists will return in the second half of this year. While Minor Food, so far, has already bottomed out and started to back to the pre-pandemic levels. However, MINT cut its investment provision from 10 billion baht to 5 billion baht. Currently, the company has 25 billion baht cash on hand, targeting to book 10-15 billion baht in 2Q-3Q from a hotel expansion.

 

Mr. Chaiyapat Paitoon, Chief Strategy Officer of Minor International Public Company Limited (MINT), said the company expects the year 2021 to perform better than last year as tourism is likely to recover from the second half of this year onwards and Minor Food’s performance has returned to profitability at pre-COVID levels, but has yet back to the year 2019 levels.

 

With a positive development of coronavirus vaccine rollout in many countries, MINT in 2021 is ready to resume its businesses to full operations, and will continue hotel inventory management, cost-cutting measures and strategy to increase business activities. 

 

Additionally, MINT plans to expand its revenue through asset light business model and therapeutic wellness and retreat business in response to the rising demand of healthy lifestyle solutions.

 

For Minor Food outlook, the company aims to continue accelerating dine-in business through new product pipelines and customer engagement, together with strengthening digital and delivery platforms to enhance profitability and sales volume.

 

Following consumer confidence and spending is expected to improve, Minor Lifestyle will focus on increasing sales performance through online channels, both on its own brand websites and third-party marketplace platforms.

 

Overall, MINT will continue to implement disciplined cost control measures, capital expenditure reduction programs and balance sheet management as precautionary measures for any unanticipated events.

 

Due to stringent cost-cutting measures between 2Q and 4Q, MINT’s cost has declined as much as 42%, therefore, the company will continue to impose these measures for another year.

 

MINT will also make an effort to control cash outflow by cutting capital spending by 52% to 4,000-5,000 million baht from 10,000 million baht to maintain its liquidity. As of January 2021, MINT has 25 billion baht cash on hand and 28 billion baht of unutilized credit facilities which is sufficient to support the operations going forward.

 

In order to maintain a current balance sheet, MINT is considering disposing of 4-5 selected assets, expecting to be complete by 2Q-3Q and would generate an income of approximately 10,000-15,000 million baht. 

 

In addition, the Board of Directors has approved the issuance of warrants to existing shareholders, with maturities in 2023 (MINT-W8 Warrants) and 2024 (MINT-W9 Warrants). The conversion of the warrants will strengthen MINT’s equity base of an additional 10 billion baht over the next two to three years, at a dilution of only 6.2%.