LAHORE: Standard Chartered Bank (Pakistan) Limited on Tuesday declared a profit after tax of Rs5.2 billion for the first half of 2018, registering a 3 percent year-on-year increase.
SCB’s client revenues rose 10 percent YoY with a positive contribution coming from transaction banking, financial markets and retail deposits.
Although administrative costs posted a YoY increase, the spending had been focused on SCB’s products, services and people to grow its operations.
Also, net advances grew by 12 percent since the start of 2018 and all its businesses posted positive momentum in client income with strong growth posted in underlying areas.
SCB’s Chief Executive Shazad Dada said, “These results demonstrate resilience of our business. Financial performance in H12018 has been steady with encouraging growth in underlying drivers.”
“Our key investment areas are growing well, and we are encouraged by our start to 2018, but we are well aware that this franchise is capable of much more,” said Dada.
“We are now focused relentlessly on building sustained asset & income growth with existing and new clients and are working hard to further optimize our control environment to achieve that,” he added.
However, on the liabilities side, the bank’s total deposits posted seven percent growth, although current and saving accounts posted 9 percent growth since the beginning of 2018.
SCB’s net markup/return/interest income after provision rose by 1 percent, whilst it registered a significant growth of 78 percent in Income from dealing in foreign currencies causing total non-mark-up/ non-interest income to jump by 6.4 percent.
Current and saving accounts constitute 94 percent of the deposit base and constant rise in low-cost deposits has greatly assisted SCB’s performance.
SCB declared an interim cash dividend of Rs0.75 per share for the half year ended June 30th, 2018 and earning per share of Rs1.34 per share.
SCBs shares closed at Rs23.52, down Rs0.58 and KSE-100 index closed trading at 42,544.47 points, down 201.31 points on Monday.
