Net profit at Access Holdings went past a quarter of a trillion naira for the nine months to September in a feat never before recorded by the banking group.
With the earnings at N250.4 billion already dwarfing that for the whole of last year by N98.2 billion or 64.5 per cent, the development sets shareholders up for stronger dividends when the curtains draw on the current year.
Nigeria’s biggest lender also reported a spring in revenue to a record N1.6 trillion from N906 billion a year ago, which too surpassed the full-year 2022 level, in this case by 14.8 per cent.
The longest cycle of interest rate hikes by the Central Bank of Nigeria, aimed at holding back a cost-of-living crisis, is giving banks an open sesame to charge borrowers higher interest.
Interest contributed nearly two-thirds of Access Holdings’ gross earnings within the period. But net interest income, which highlights the difference between the cash the lender generated from lending and what it paid out to savers, only grew by two-fifths to N390 billion for the group, whose deposits rose to N16.2 trillion from N11.3 trillion a year ago.
Compared to its interest income, the pace at which the cash the corporation put by to cover souring loans grew modestly by 16.8 per cent, bucking an industry-wide trend that was strongly manifest at half year and has also shown in the latest financials of rival GTCO, which issued its own earnings report a couple of days back.
A foreign exchange gain of N314.6 billion, off the back of converting loans and financial instruments denominated in foreign currencies into naira which dropped 74 per cent against the dollar in the review period, also set the tone for the bumper profit. That sum compares to the N184.1 billion earned for the first nine months of last year.
Third-quarter results, which accompanied the financials, showed post-tax profit at N115 billion, meaning the three months to September alone accounted for 45.9 per cent of the net profit for the period.
Access Holdings bought the majority interest in the Angolan bank Finibanco S.A. this July after a botched takeover of Kenya’s Sidian Bank. Its assets now total N21.4 trillion in contrast to N15 trillion as of last December.
The financial services group’s acquisition of StanChart’s banking businesses in Angola, The Gambia, Cameroon and Sierra Leone, and of its consumer, private & business banking in Tanzania is in the bag after deals were agreed this year.
