ATB Financial posts $274.6M net income

A stronger provincial economy has in part helped ATB Financial to post record numbers in the past fiscal year, the company said Thursday.

The company’s final balance sheet for the fiscal year ending March 31 showed a net income of $274.6 million, which was up more than 80 per cent over the previous year’s $150.8 million.

As well as posting its highest operating net income, ATB Financial also recorded its highest operating revenue in a single quarter and highest operating revenue in a single year.

Company president and chief executive Dave Mowat pointed to growth in loans as another contributing factor to its best-yet results.

“Economic improvements in Alberta certainly helped us deliver these outstanding results,” Mowat said in a statement.

“Our commitment is to always be there for Albertans — we didn’t tighten up staffing or reduce service to customers. We increased loans — even when times got tough.

“Loan loss provisions were a struggle during the recession, but we believed things would improve. That approach paid off.”

Mowat, who was hired to run the provincially owned financial institution in 2007, plans to retire from his position on June 30.

Loans were up 8.1 per cent to $44.1 billion from $40.8 billion in the previous year while deposits decreased 3.7 per cent to $32.7 billion from $33.9 billion in the previous year.

Adding further gloss to its shiny bottom line, ATB Financial’s business and agriculture unit posted a net income of $140.7 million, which was more than double from the year before.

ATB Financial chief financial officer Bob McGee said the company expected to see improvements in the economic environment earlier in the financial year, “but I don’t think anyone anticipated the level of strengthening we ultimately experienced.”

“These improvements, coupled with our strategy to invest for growth and to always be there for Albertans, led to considerably stronger results than we originally anticipated,” he said in a statement.

“That, in turn, leaves us pretty optimistic about what we’ll be able to achieve next year.”

McGee said they expected to see “deterioration” in some of the loan portfolios; however, the “quality of loans rebounded much faster than expected.”

ATB’s corporate financial services unit posted a net income of $239.7 million and the company’s investor services ended the year with $18.7 billion in assets under administration, up almost $2 billion from the previous year.

The number of customers increased to more than 750,000 from about 740,000 in the previous year.