Due to another round of introduced restrictions caused by second wave of Covid-19, Storent Group rent incomes have decreased in Q4 compared to Q4 2019. Limited labor mobility and developers caution often caused delays or stops on construction projects, which eventually pushed down rental prices on several markets due to equipment overcapacity.

According to official reports for Q3 2020, Baltics construction markets have seen decrease of construction activities compared to Q3 2019: Estonia by 5%, Latvia by 0,3% and Lithuania by 5%. Same trend expected to have taken place through Q4 as region was still experiencing various restrictions affecting the industry.

Storent sales and customer service teams continue to promote contactless online rental platform that has been introduced in both Baltics and Nordics. There has been strong growth of online orders since initial launch of online rental platform in Baltics in spring of 2020, as by the end of Q4 share of online rental revenue have reached almost 40% in Latvia and Lithuania and 20% in Estonia. We expect steady growth of online sales in Nordic countries where current Covid situation expected to serve as additional driver for customers rental habits change. Rental process digitalization in Baltics was launched in January 2020 and since then we have seen an excellent trend, as by the end of Q4 70% of all rental transactions in Baltics were signed digitally. We expect healthy growth trend of rental transactions digitalization in Nordics as well. Steady growth of online revenues, volume of online orders, ratio of repetitive online purchases, stable flow of new online registrations and increasing share of digitally verified rental transactions clearly signal that customers are accepting well new way of renting machinery. Storent group continues cooperation with online splitrent equipment provider Preferrent allowing to increase rental equipment fleet without capital investments. We continue to pursue an aim of becoming service rental company by constantly increasing share of incomes from splitrent, which already have reached nearly a half of all rental revenues.

Baiba Onkele

AS Storent Investments CFO

Mobile: + 371 29340012

E-mail: baiba.onkele@storent.com 

www.storent.com