Tijari reports net profit of KD 27.5m
Commercial Bank registers 8.2% jump in profit for 9 months of 2016
Commercial Bank of Kuwait announced net profit of KD 27.5 million for the nine months period of 2016 compared to KD 25.4 million of the same period last year, a growth of 8.2 percent. The fee income witnessed a year-on-year growth of 8.8 percent, foreign exchange income 61 percent and investment portfolio income 31.3 percent. The Bank continues to maintain solid level of operating profit before provision amounting to KD 74.5 million compared to KD 74.0 million for the same period last year.
Commenting on the Bank’s financial results, the Bank’s spokesman Yacoub Al-Ebrahim said, Commercial Bank’s total assets at the end of September 2016 reached KD 4,047 million (September 2015: KD 4,035 million). The Banks’ capital adequacy ratio at the end of September 2016 at 16.86 percent is higher than the minimum 13.5 percent required by the Central Bank of Kuwait, and leverage ratio at 10.6 percent is more than three times higher than the minimum requirement of three percent.
Al-Ebrahim further added that the Bank continues to maintain a lower NPL ratio which reached 0.91 percent at the end of September 2016, one of the best ratios in Kuwait banking system with available provisioning coverage of 658.8 percent.
Al-Ebrahim concluded his statement by referring to the Bank’s solid performance which was recognized by the International rating agencies in their recently published credit opinion. This was obviously reflected by Fitch Ratings upgrading the Viability Ratings (VR) of the Bank to ‘bb’ (from ‘bb-’) owing to its improving financial profile following the successful execution of strategic objectives, business reorganization and expected improvement in earnings and adequate capitalization. Similarly, Moody’s in their recently published report stated that the Bank has made significant progress in cleaning its book of the accumulated problem loans, drastically cutting its non-performing loans-to-gross loans ratio along with highlighting the Bank’s success in building up substantial provisions against potential losses. Moody’s report further stated that pre-provision income stood at 2.5 percent of average total assets is slightly above the system average.