RHB‘s Q2 earnings up

> Net profit rises 43% to RM500.96 million on lower impairment losses

PETALING JAYA: RHB Bank Bhd reported a 43.1% rise in net profit to RM500.96 million for the second quarter ended June 30, 2017 against RM350.17 million in the previous corresponding period, underpinned by lower impairment losses on loans and other assets.

Revenue, however, was flat at RM2.63 billion against RM2.65 billion in the same period a year ago.

The group has proposed to declare an interim dividend of 5 sen per share totaling RM200.5 million for the quarter under review, representing a dividend payout ratio of 20%.

For the first half of the year, RHB’s net profit rose 9.4% from RM915.05 million to RM1 billion, on the back of a 2.1% drop in revenue from RM5.36 billion to RM5.25 billion.

The group said in a filing with the stock exchange that its gross loans and financing grew 3.2% and 1.4% in the first six months to RM156.6 billion. The increases were mainly from the mortgage and the small and medium enterprise segments, which recorded annualised growth rates of 12.2% and 7.1% respectively.

Compared with December 2016, its gross impaired loans declined slightly to RM3.6 billion, with the gross impaired loans ratio improving to 2.29% from 2.43%.

As at June 30 2017, RHB’s common equity tier-1 and total capital ratio, taking into consideration the FY17 interim dividend, remained strong at 13.4% and 17.0% respectively. These capital ratios are well above the Basel III minimum transitional arrangement requirements of 5.75% and 9.25% respectively.

RHB expects the Malaysian banking sector to see signs of modest growth, underpinned by moderate increase in lending to household sector and recovery in business loans.

RHB’s share price was unchanged at RM5.05 yesterday on 1.88 million shares traded, giving the banking group a market capitalisation of RM20.25 billion.