Testimonies of mega profit’ll dominate Zenith Bank’s AGM in Lagos today
The Civic Centre on Ozumba Mbadiwe street, Victoria Island, Lagos will today come alive as leading Tier 1 financial conglomerate, Zenith Bank Plc holds its Annual General Meeting (AGM) amidst bountiful financial year even in a stressed economy after all.
Accordingly, industry analysts say shareholders of the bank have reasons to be optimistic going into the AGM considering jump in the bank’s profit before tax to N232 billion and declared dividend of N88 billion for the year ended December 31, 2018.
The magic of how the bank was able to coast to massive results had been traced to the strategic management efficiency driven by the chairman, Jim Ovia and Group Managing Director, Mr. Peter Amangbo within the tortuous year under review.
Otherwise, Zenith Bank showed significant resilience, ending the year with higher bottom-line and it did not fail to relish shareholders with high dividend.
Besides, the balance sheet showed gross earnings stood at N630.344 billion compared with N745.189 billion in 2017. It also grew its net interest income and operating income by 15 per cent and eight per cent respectively.
Zenith had adopted cost efficiency measures and it showed as the group recorded its lowest ever cost-to-income ratio at 49.3 per cent from 52.8 per cent in 2017. Net interest income improved to N295.594 billion compared with N257.991 billion in 2017.
With strong risk-centric strategy, the financial year saw cost of risk dipped significantly from 4.3 per cent in the prior year to 0.9 per cent in 2018 as reflected through the major drop in impairment charges by 81 per cent, from N98.29 billion to N18.372 billion.
Zenith Bank’s record PBT was achieved through the group’s optimisation of its cost of funds, cost-to-income ratio and cost of risk, ensuring that earnings per share strengthened by 11 per cent to N6.15.
This is as Profit before tax (PBT) rose by 16.2 per cent from N199.319 billion to N231.685 billion, while profit after tax (PAT) grew by 11.3 per cent to N193.424 billion from N173.791 billion in 2017.
