The much-awaited half-year results of United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc for the period ended June 30, 2020, have been released to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).
The documents containing the financial status of the top Nigerian bank were released on Tuesday, September 1, 2020, a day after the company issued a statement that the results could be filed by month-end.
In the financial reports, the board of UBA recommended the payment of an interim dividend of 17 kobo for the period under review, 15 per cent or 3 kobo lower than the 20 kobo paid in the corresponding period of 2019.
From the brief analysis of the earnings, it was observed that the net profit of the lender went down by 22 per cent to N44.4 billion from N56.7 billion last year, while the pre-tax profit reduced to N57.1 billion from N70.3 billion, with the earnings per share (EPS) dropping to N1.24 from N1.62.
In the results, UBA said it had an interest income of N205.6 billion in the first six months of this year, higher than N204.9 billion recorded in the same period of last year. This slight growth was boosted by earnings from term loans and overdrafts despite a decline in revenue from bonds and treasury bills as a result of the low-yield environment.
However, the interest expense reduced to N86.3 billion from N94.8 billion in the first half of last year, while the net interest income rose to N119.3 billion from N110.1 billion.
The fees and commission income increased to N55.9 billion in the period under review from N52.3 billion just as the fees and commission expense jumped to N17.3 billion from N16.3 billion, with the net fee and commission income closing at N38.6 billion as at June 30, 2020, as against N36.1 billion as at June 30, 2019.
In the course of its business operations in the first six months of this year, UBA said it was involved in 846 legal cases, higher than 644 cases in the same period of 2019. It noted that the total amount claimed in the cases against the bank was estimated at N300.42 billion versus N472.04 billion in 2019.
During the period, investors traded a total of 3,523,723,566 units of UBA shares on the stock exchange, representing 10.3 per cent of the shares outstanding of the lender.
However, the share price reduced by 12.6 per cent in the period, closing at N6.25 per unit from N7.15 per unit as at December 31, 2019, reflecting the bearish performance of the local equity market, as signified by the about 8.8 per cent and about 21.0 per cent loss in the All Share Index (ASI) and the banking sector index respectively during the period ended June 30, 2020.
