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Stanbic bucks trend as after-tax profit hits Sh3.23 bn

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Stanbic Bank along Kimathi Street on December 13, 2014. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Stanbic Bank Kenya #ticker:CFC has posted the largest growth in net profit among tier-one lenders for the nine months to September helped by the absence of an exceptional item last year related to its South Sudan operations.

Its after-tax profit rose by 19.71 per cent to hit Sh3.23 billion, the bank said in a statement Friday.

The jump in earnings was buoyed by the absence of a Sh1.2 billion hit the bank took in 2016 due to devaluation of currency in South Sudan resulting from hyper-inflation.

Without the one-off readjustment, the bank’s profit would have dropped by about Sh1 billion.

Stanbic said profit before taxation dropped to Sh4.38 billion from Sh5.3 billion, a 17.36 per cent decline.

Bad debt

The earnings were hurt by provisions against bad debt which almost doubled by Sh2.27 billion. The lender’s total non-performing loans rose to Sh7.91 billion in September from Sh5.16 billion in the same period last year.

Its loan book expanded by Sh5.76 billion to stand Sh121.35 billion from Sh115.59 billion in 2016.

Stanbic joins KCB Group #ticker:KCB, which reported a 5.03 per cent rise in net profit to Sh15.1 billion, as the only top-tier lender to have grown its bottom-line in the period under review.

Standard Chartered #ticker:SCBK, Barclays #ticker:BBK, Co-operative Bank #ticker:COOP, Diamond Trust #ticker:DTK and Equity Bank #ticker:EQTY have reported a 39, 12, 9.5, 3.7 and 3 per cent drop in net profit in the nine-month period.

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