Stuart Grimshaw’s first public appearance as humm chief executive, at the presentation of the company’s 2022/23 results yesterday, was an understated affair with the new CEO promising to “continue to review and remove unnecessary cost and complexity from the business”. Grimshaw, a banking industry veteran, took over in June, at the end of a year of substantial restructuring for the commercial and consumer finance company. His message yesterday was that the clean-up, after an overly ambitious and largely unsuccessful expansion, has a way to go before any new plans are announced. At least the new CEO was able to announce a profit – a modest A$2.9 million but a substantial turnaround from the loss of $170.3 million in 2021/22. Last year’s loss was due to a $207.5 million impairment of goodwill and other intangible assets, which related to the withdrawal of a number of buy now, pay later products. The business was repositioned to focus on financing large transactions. There were further impairments in the year to June, following the decision to close the company’s operation in the United Kingdom. The company said shareholders should focus on its normalised cash profit of $75 million – down from $76.9 million in the previous year. humm cut operating expenses 6 per cent. The cost-to-income ratio was unchanged at 60 per cent. The asset finance division, flexicommercial, was the driver of growth. flexicommercial Australia increased business volume from $983 million to $1.4 billion year-on-year and receivables grew from $994 million to $1.7 billion.  flexicommercial New Zealand increased business volume from $113 million to $190 million and receivables from $143 million to $214 million. Total commercial receivables of $2.4 billion were well in excess of consumer finance receivables of $1.8 billion. Grimshaw said he saw opportunities to expand the company’s commercial offerings. He said the company has a strong funding base, issuing more than $1 billion of asset-backed securities during the year. At June 30, it had $4.9 billion of wholesale debt facilities, with $983 million undrawn.