NCB ups dividend as profit climbs

National Commercial Bank approved an increase dividend payment of 35 cents per share payable on May 22, 2014 for stockholders on record as at May 9, 2014. Last year for the March quarter as a result of the fall in profit, the bank cut its dividend paid on May 24 last year to 16 cents per share down from 23 cents they paid in March. A dividend of 32 cents per ordinary stock was paid on February 20 this year.
NCB also released the second quarter results to March and as expected the results showed strong improvement over the 2013 quarter with a net profit of $2.99 billion up from the NDX affected $1.74 billion in 2013. The latest quarterly figures exceeds the amount reported in the December quarter when they made $2.86 billion which was boosted by a $300 million gain from acquisition of a subsidiary. Without that one off non-operating income profit would have grown by 17 percent over the December 2013.
Huge progress has been made in recovering from the negative impact that the NDX debt swap had on net interest income last year as $5.89 billion to $6.11 billion. For the six months to March the bank generated net profit $5.85 billion up from $4.53 billion last year resulting in earnings per share of $2.38 for the current year to date. In achieving these results NCB was able to hold expenses with overall expenses falling in the March quarter compared with the December figures and the latest figures just slightly higher than for the similar quarter last year being just $74 million more at $6.97 billion for March 2013 quarter. For the year to March expenses are up $1.73 billion to $14.3 billion.
The bank seems to be on target to clock around $5 per share earnings for the current fiscal year that ends in September.
The bank grew loans from $141.1 billion to just over $150.5 billion and made provision for bad loans of $492 million versus $390 million in December and $494 million in the 2013 March quarter. For the 2014 six months period bad loan provisioning amounted to $882 million a decline from $1.07 billion.