MBSB’s earnings jump 48% in 3Q

by **Cals** Wed 23 Oct 2013, 11:26

Business & Markets 2013

Written by Zatil Husna Wan Fauzi of theedgemalaysia.com

Wednesday, 23 October 2013 09:58

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia Building Society Bhd’s (MBSB) profit increased 47.6% to RM132.7 million in the third quarter of 2013 financial year (3QFY13) ended Sept 30, from RM89.9 million in the same quarter last year, on higher income from its Islamic banking operations and increased net interest income from conventional business.

In a statement to Bursa Malaysia yesterday, the group said its Islamic banking operations saw an increase of 44.8% to RM297.5 million in 3Q from RM205.5 million in 3QFY12.

MBSB’s total income for the 3QFY13 stood at RM376.1 million compared with RM293.7 million in 3QFY12.

Datuk Ahmad Zaini Othman, president and CEO of MBSB, said although its retail portfolio registered slower growth during the quarter, the better performance was driven by business lending.

“The slower retail growth reflected the measures announced by Bank Negara Malaysia in early July to further promote a sound and sustainable household sector. Our corporate business lending activities continued to show improvements with disbursements in the third quarter.

“We are placing a lot more emphasis on continuous improvement in collections and recovery for both retail and corporate loans and refining our strategies on specific groups of assets,” he said.

For the nine-month period, net profit soared to RM464 million, up 76.4% from RM263 million in the same period last year. Revenue stood at RM1.8 billion, against RM1.3 billion previously. The group’s accumulative total income increased to RM1.04 billion from RM770.3 million previously.

In a separate filing with Bursa Malaysia, MBSB said it had surpassed its key performance indicators — annualised group return on equity (ROE) of 15% and annualised revenue growth of 25%. Its actual ROE for the nine-month period was 34.1% and revenue growth was 32.2%.

MBSB’s net non-performing loan (NPL) ratio stood at 3.4% as at Sept 30 from 4.5% in December last year. Net loans, advances and financing stood at RM30.1 billion, up 24.2%, compared with RM24.3 billion on Dec 31, 2012.
It is worth noting that MBSB recently proposed a rights issuance to raise RM1.47 billion.

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on October 23, 2013.