Retail Banking Buoys Fidelity Bank H1’19 Earnings, PBT up 16.2%

By Dipo Olowookere

On Thursday, August 29, 2019, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) finally released the financial statements of Fidelity Bank Plc for the half year ended June 30, 2019 forwarded to it by the board of the company.

In a surface analysis done by Business Post, the lender recorded growth in the key performance indicators, with both the top-line and bottom-line improving in the period under review.

For example, in the first half of the year, Fidelity Bank increased its gross earnings by N103.7 billion compared with the N92.3 billion recorded in the same period of last year. This 12.35 percent growth in the earnings was buoyed in the increases recorded in the retail and investment banking segments of the bank.

Business Post harvested from the half year results that the retail business of Fidelity Bank contributed N43.9 billion to the earnings compared with N26.4 billion in H1 2018, while the investment banking segment contributed N33.4 billion, higher than N29.7 billion in the first half of last year.

However, there was a decline in the contribution of the corporate banking to the revenue generated by Fidelity Bank in the period under review, N26.4 billion in H1 2019 versus N36.2 billion in H1 2018.

However, the net interest depreciated to N36.9 billion from N38.1 billion, while the net interest income after credit loss expense increased to N42.4 billion from N35.5 billion.

In H1 2019, the bank increased its fee and commission income to N13.1 billion from N9.9 billion in H1 2018, while the fee and commission expense went up to N2.4 billion from N1.8 billion, with the other operating income rising to N4.8 billion from N2.3 billion.

In the first six months of this year, the financial institution spent N11.7 billion on personnel expenses against N10.5 billion used in the same period of last year, while N24.1 billion was expended on other operating expense, higher than N19.3 billion in H1 2018.

In the period under consideration, the profit before tax of Fidelity Bank increased by 16.2 percent to N15.1 billion from N13.0 billion in same time of last year, while the profit after tax rose to N13.7 billion from N11.8 billion, with the earnings per share (EPS) jumping to 47 kobo in H1 2019 from 41 kobo in H1 2018.