DUBAI: National Bank of Kuwait, the Gulf Arab state’s largest commercial lender, reported a 3.2 percent rise in first-quarter net profit yesterday, edging ahead of analysts’ expectations.
Net profit was Dh83.9m ($298.6m) in the three months to the end of March, compared to Dh81.3m a year ago, it said in a bourse filing. Five analysts in a Reuters poll had predicted Dh80.70m in net profit on average for the quarter.
NBK, which opened a new office in Dubai in March, saw its international banking profit grow 15.5 percent in the first quarter of this year.
Group chief executive officer Isam Al Sager said the bank would maintain a strategy focused on diversification, international expansion and a stronger push into Islamic finance.
Earlier this year he took over as CEO from Ibrahim Dabdoub, who ran NBK for three decades and helped transform it from a local lender into the Gulf’s fifth largest bank by assets.
Sager said that NBK’s first-quarter profit was mainly driven by core banking revenues. Net operating income grew 7.6 percent year-on-year to Dh158.4m, while loans and advances rose 9.6 percent to Dh10.95bn during the period.
During the first quarter, the bank’s non-performing loans to gross loans ratio dropped to 1.93 percent from 2.72 percent a year earlier.
The bank’s vice chairman Nasser Al Sayer said last month that Kuwait’s domestic operating environment was improving. The market is seeing some acceleration in the tendering, award and execution of some large infrastructure projects.
Reuters
