UBA declares interim result, post N31.9 billion Profit After Tax

United Bank for Africa Plc has released its half year audited reports for the period ended June 30, 2015.

The report presented to members of the Nigerian Stock Exchange shows the bank has continued to grow and wax stronger in the last six months since its 2014 audited accounts. In the report, the bank’s balance sheet reveals a 6% growth from Dec 2014 at N2.9 trillion for the group and N2.4 billion for the bank with shareholders equity of N307.6 billion for the group and n318.7 billion for the bank. The profit before tax rose to N31.99 billion for the group and N24.3 billion for the bank over the same period.

In the same vein, the bank interest income rose to N116.235 billion from N98.547 billion in H1’2014. The group’s net interest income also rose to N65.658 billion from N55.211 billion in the first half of 2014. Profit before income tax appreciated to N39.046 billion from N28.893 billion in the first half of 2014, while its profit for the first half of 2015 period rose to N31.999 billion from N22.856 billion in the first half of 2014.

Gross earnings also rose to 166.94 billion naira compared with 138.22 billion naira the previous year. Subsequently the bank has announced an interim dividend of 20k for every share of 50k held.

The result has continued to attract comments and reaction from investors and analysts. FBN Capital, for instance, released a statement saying: “The interim dividend is a first for UBA and was not expected (until recently when it was confirmed that UBA was auditing its results). Our reaction to the dividend is mixed. While clearly attractive (especially, given that our full-year dividend forecast was 14 kobo), we would have preferred a much lower payout in order for UBA to preserve its capital better. Recall that the bank only recently concluded a rights issue, which raised N11.5 billion. To put this into context, the interim dividend equates to a sum of N7.3 billion.

“Looking away from the dividend, we believe the underlying results are strong enough, especially given that they are audited, to allow the market to breathe a sigh of relief. On the back of these results, we would expect consensus estimates to be revised up. We believe these concerns about H1 earnings contributed to the sell-off in UBA shares over the past few months. At the start of this week, the shares were down -42 percent in three months compared with -28 percent for the banking sector and -16 percent for the ASI. We expect to see a recovery on the back of these results. We rate UBA shares Outperform. Our estimates are under review.”

UBA Plc, better known as Africa’s global bank, is one of the biggest banks on the African continent and currently operates in nineteen African countries with additional presence in USA, UK and France.

Now fully positioned as a pan-African bank, the UBA Group is firmly in the forefront of driving the renaissance of the African economy and is well positioned as a one-stop financial services institution, with growing reputation as the face of banking on the continent. The Bank has more than 65 years of providing uninterrupted banking operations dating back to 1948.