Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Sterling Bank, Abubakar Suleiman.
By Barnabas Esiet.
Sterling Bank Plc., a full service national commercial bank, has reported a net operating income of N18.78 billion in the first quarter ended March 31, 2020.
This represents an increase of 1.2% compared with the N18.57 billion recorded during the corresponding period of 2019.
This is contained in the bank’s condensed unaudited group interim financial statement released recently.
In a statement, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the bank, Abubakar Suleiman, noted that the bank’s net trading income grew remarkably, despite a very challenging macro-economic environment.
He said the income rose to N984 million as against N435 million in the previous year, representing an increase of 126.2 percent.
‘’Overall, the Bank recorded gross earnings and profit after tax of N32.9 billion and N2.065 billion respectively for the first quarter ended March 31, 2020.’’ The statement read.
Suleiman explained that the bank’s marginal drop in net profit was due to a combination of a decline in fees and commission income following the downward review of transactional charges and a slight increase in total expenses which rose from N15.3 billion in 2019 to N16.6 billion in 2020.
According to the statement, the bank was able to reduce its non-performing loans from 2.2% to 2% during the review period.
The Sterling Bank boss said the deposit base rose to N898.58 billion in the first quarter of 2020 up from N892.66 billion in the corresponding period of 2019, loans and advances also went up to N627.12 billion from N618.73 while total assets rose to N1.23 trillion from N1.18 trillion, representing a growth of 4.1 percent.
Sterling Bank has an authorized share capital of N16 billion, made up of 32 billion ordinary shares of 50 kobo each of which N14.39 had been issued and fully paid-up and a share premium of N42.8 billion.
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