The message from finance company Thorn Group in half-year results released yesterday is that it has come through two years of “challenging times” and now it is back in business, although in considerably diminished form. Thorn completed the sale of its consumer finance business Radio Rentals last December and will operate as an SME asset and invoice finance company. And in August, the company’s warehouse recommenced activity after a restructure. Thorn ran into problems in April 2020, when it responded to COVID by closing all 62 Radio Rentals stores. A few weeks later it made the closures permanent and retrenched 300 staff. The company said it would revitalise Radio Rentals as a “digital pure play” but struggled to make headway. Last December, it sold the business to Credit Corp for a consideration of A$46.2 million. The profit on the sale was $11.7 million.  It also had problems in its asset finance division. In 2020, it suffered a blowout in arrears that put it in breach of its warehouse finance parameters and which meant that it was unable to sell originations into the warehouse. Thorn finally resolved its warehouse funding problems in August, when its funders, a major domestic bank and an ASX-listed investment management firm, agreed to a restructure and re-commencement of the warehouse. The funding limit is $200 million.  In its reconstituted form, it generated revenue of $7.1 million from ongoing operations in the six months to September. It made a loss of $1.7 million, which would have been worse except for an impairment benefit of $1.9 million. It received a second tranche payment of $2.3 million for Radio Rentals during the half, which allowed it to report a profit of $556 million. Asset finance originations for the September half were $65.6 million and there were $14.7 million of invoice finance drawdowns. Net receivables rose from $88.6 million in March to $115.8 million at the end of September. Business finance arrears (30 days or more overdue) were 1.8 per cent of receivables. This is a big improvement on recent performance – 7.4 per cent in March and 10 per cent in September last year. Thorn is not out of the woods yet. The warehouse facility is available until August next year and the company will have to demonstrate good performance to negotiate an extension.