Shareholders of Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc yesterday approved a dividend payment of N15.36 billion for the 2018 financial year.
The dividend declaration translates to N1.50 for every ordinary share of 50 kobo held by the company’s shareholders whose names appeared on the register of members at the close of business on May 20th, 2019.
The announcement was made during the company’s 7th Annual General Meeting which held in Lagos on Wednesday. During the meeting, some key details of the company’s full-year 2018 financial results were discussed.
Note that the payment date for the dividends was fixed for Thursday, June 20th, 2019.
Breakdown of the results: The Chairman, Mr Basil Omiyi, who presided over the meeting, noted that the company witnessed significant improvement in its key performance indicators as can be seen below:
- Total Assets grew by 20% from N1.386 trillion in 2017 to N1.664 trillion in 2018.
- Gross Earnings surged by 5% to N222.360 billion up from N212.434 billion the year before.
- Profit After Tax rose astronomically by 54%, leaping from N48.381 billion recorded in 2017 to N78.440 billion in 2018.
Reasons for Improvements: Mr Omiyi affirmed that the Stanbic IBTC Holding’s commitment to creating investments for its shareholders impacted positively on the bottom line.
He specifically identified the following major growth lines in total assets to be key factors that impacted the group’s performance:
- Investment of N83.36 billion in financial securities.
- Cash and cash equivalents of N54.43 billion
- Pledged assets of N99.30 billion
- Loans and Advances of N60.63 billion for 2018, altogether closing at N432.71 billion
CEO Allays Fear of NPL: Yinka Sanni, the Group Chief Executive Officer of Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, said shareholders should not worry about the bank’s loans because the loans are performing well.
He gave the assurance in response to a shareholder who warned that the board should be wary of the bank’s increasing loan portfolio in order to avoid any incident of writing off debts if loans went bad.
The CEO acknowledged that there was a rise in the group’s penalties and fine owing to the N1.886 billion fine the Central Bank of Nigeria levied on it for the irregular Certificates of Capital Importation issued to MTN Nigeria Communications Plc between 2007 and 2015. He promised that a similar incident would not repeat itself.
It should be noted that the group’s Non-Performing Loans nosedived from 8.6% in 2017 to 3.97% in 2018.
Stanbic IBTC Holdings’s shares traded at N41.9 per share on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.