Despite Economic Headwinds, FBN Holdings Grows Profit by 100% in 2021 Financial Year

FBN Holdings Plc, Nigeria’s leading financial institution, has exceeded all expectations in the financial year ended December 31, 2021 as profit after tax jumped a whopping 100% to ₦151.1 billion.

The bank disclosed this in its audited financial statement obtained by Investors King.

Gross earnings grew by 28.2% to ₦757.3 billion, up from  ₦590.7 billion filed in the 2020 financial year. Operating income also inched higher by 35.5% in the year under review to ₦592.8 billion from ₦437.6 billion filed in the corresponding year of 2020.

As expected, operating expenses stood at ₦334.2 billion in 2021, representing an increase of 14.2% from ₦292.5 billion achieved in the 2020 financial year. The growth was broad-based as the lender’s profit before tax jumped 99.1% to ₦166.7 billion from ₦83.7 billion while profit after tax rose from ₦75.6 billion in 2020 to ₦151.1 billion in 2021, an increase of 99.9%.

Similarly, earnings per share improved by 70.2% to N4.17 from N2.45 in the same period of 2020.

However, interest income dipped by 4.1% from ₦384.8 billion in 2020 to ₦369 billion in 2021, largely due to the moderated interest rate environment that negatively dragged on yields.

Therefore, to mitigate the effect of the low-interest rate, FBN Holdings intensified deposit mobilisation and funding strategy that help enhance loan growth at optimised rates, leading to a 5.7% increase in interest expense to ₦140.8 billion from ₦133.2 billion in 2020. As a result, net interest income declined by 9.3% to ₦228.2 billion.

Conversely, non-interest revenue grew by 96.1% to ₦364.6 billion from ₦185.9 billion in 2020 on the back of increased fees and commission income, treasury activities and other operating income.

Commenting on the results, Dr. Adesola Adeduntan, Chief Executive Officer of FirstBank Group said: “Following years of strategic restructuring of the Bank’s balance sheet and operations, the Commercial Banking business is beginning to transition into a sustained growth phase delivering performance commensurate to the size of our business and capabilities of our people. Profit before tax is up 77.9%, gross earnings 30.3%, total assets 15.9% and customer deposits up 19.5%.

“This performance was driven by a relentless focus on the needs of customers and improving the competitiveness of our offerings. We have sharpened our ‘Go To Market’ approach to better leverage the opportunities which our large scale provides in addition to becoming more relevant to our clients by improving our value propositions.

“This performance is also in line with the Bank’s Quantum Profitability Leap agenda which seeks to ensure that we fully maximise the revenue generating capacity of our business to boost the bottom line and fulfil the expectations of all stakeholders in the business.

“The demonstrated resilience of our franchise to headwinds and excellent risk management capabilities place us in a good position to weather any macro-economic shocks which may arise due to the volatile nature of current operating environment. Our Non-performing loans ratio at the end of the year was 6.1% which represents significant progress towards those of other Tier 1 banks and the regulatory threshold of 5.0%.

“We will continue to leverage our investments in digital platforms, IT infrastructure, people, and pan-African operations to ensure this growth trend is sustained”.