20th Feb 2015 08:30
LONDON (Alliance News) - Bank of Georgia Holdings PLC, the holding company of JSC Bank of Georgia, Friday reported a 13% rise in pretax profit for 2014, boosted by strong lending in the fourth quarter.
In a statement, Bank of Georgia Holdings said it made a GEL276.6 million pretax profit in 2014, compared with GEL245.3 million in the prior year.
The increase was helped by a 19% rise in fourth-quarter pretax profit to GEL80.4 million.
"This full year performance was supported by a strong fourth quarter. Compared to the third quarter of 2014, customer lending grew by 13.9%, the net interest margin increased by 20 basis points to 7.6%, and revenues increased by 8.6%. Costs remained well controlled, with positive operating leverage of 2.9 percentage points, and asset quality remained good with a cost of risk in the quarter of 1.2% and the [non-performing loans] to gross loans ratio falling to 3.4% at the end of the year," Chief Executive Irakli Gilauri said in a statement.
Gilauri highlighted three main reasons for the rise in annual profit, picking out strong customer lending growth in its banking businesses, net non-interest income growth, up 13.6% during the year, driven by retail banking and investment management, and healthcare revenue more than doubling during the year, driven by both organic growth and the impact of recent acquisitions.
The group said it intends to increase its annual dividend to GEL2.1 per share, an increase of 5%.
Bank of Georgia Holdings shares were up 1.2% at 2,165.00 pence on Friday morning.
By Samuel Agini; [email protected]; @samuelagini
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