Business

Thursday August 28, 2008

Maybank profit slides

By JAGDEV SINGH SIDHU   and IZWAN IDRIS


The drop largely attributed to write-off of deposit for BII

KUALA LUMPUR: Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) posted a lower profit for its financial year ended June 30, 2008, after writing off the deposit placed for the purchase of PT Bank Internasional Indonesia (BII). The write-off notwithstanding, it remains hopeful that a deal could still be reached.

The country’s largest bank, however, expects its financial performance for the current year to remain flattish given the tougher economic environment.

For the year, Maybank posted a net profit of RM2.92bil, or 60.08 sen a share, down about 8% from RM3.18bil, or 66.07 sen a share, which was largely due to a writedown of RM483.8mil for the deposit placed for the purchase of 100% equity in Sorak Financial Holdings Pte Ltd, the controlling shareholder of BII.

Datuk Seri Abdul Wahid answering questions on Wednesday.

The net loss of the deposit, however, was RM290mil as Maybank had made RM193mil in foreign exchange gains from money placed earlier in Singapore to pay for the entire BII acquisition.

“This was a reasonable performance considering the challenging environment,’’ Maybank president and chief executive officer Datuk Seri Abdul Wahid Omar told a press conference yesterday.

Stripping out the one-off adjustments, which included the provision for the deposit, staff costs and information technology investments, Maybank would have posted a slight gain in profit.

Revenue for the year was higher at RM16.15bil compared with RM15.18bil in the previous financial year. Pre-tax profit, with the one-off items, was RM4.09bil compared with RM4.36bil previously.

Commercial banking accounted for 92% of total pre-tax profit and, by geography, business in Malaysia made up 81% of pre-tax profit.

The bank declared a final dividend of 20 sen a share.

For the year, Maybank said, loans growth was 16% with loans overseas expanding at a faster pace of 27%. Margins declined a couple of basis points to 2.71% but there was a huge jump in non-interest income for the year on higher transactional fees, commissions and foreign exchange.

Loans for the purchase of vehicles saw the largest growth in its loans book, followed by credit cards. Loans for house purchases, however, declined, which Maybank attributed to tough market conditions.

Business loans, especially to small and medium-scale industries, saw brisk gains as did loans from overseas operations, especially Singapore where there was a 31.9% rise in loans in ringgit terms (23.2% in Singapore dollars).

Despite the revenue increase, the rise in cost was more rapid, which resulted in the group’s higher cost-to-income ratio.

Wahid aims to bring the cost-to-income ratio down by tackling lumpy IT investments. He said while job cuts were not on the agenda, better management of recruitment and moving more staff to revenue-generating functions would be done.

Net non-performing loans ratio declined to 1.92% as at end June.

On the current year, Wahid said it was challenging and there would be more provisions. The bank’s financial performance is expected to be flat against the financial year ended June 2008.

Wahid said Maybank still had ambition to own a bank in Indonesia – something it needs to do to fulfil its goal of being one of the top banks in South-East Asia – but the deal for BII would not go through under the current divestment rules set by Bapepam, Indonesia’s capital market supervisory agency.

“We are looking at various options that will be acceptable to all parties,’’ he said, adding that a decision was expected by Sept 26.


MAYBANK : [Stock Watch] [News]


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