NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenyan financial firm Stanbic Holdings said on Tuesday its 2021 pretax profit surged 57% to 9.76 billion shillings ($85.76 million) from a year earlier, helped by rising interest income and a drop in impairment charges.
Stanbic Holdings, which also operates in South Sudan, said net interest income rose to 14.37 billion shillings from 12.80 billion shillings a year earlier. Credit impairment charges fell to 2.52 billion shillings from 4.88 billion shillings.
Like other Kenyan lenders, Stanbic’s profit was hit by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, including restructuring of hundreds of billions of shillings in loans to help distressed borrowers.
It started to recover last year as the government lifted measures it imposed to control the spread of the coronavirus.
The company, which is partly owned by South Africa’s Standard Bank Group, said its earnings per share rose to 18.23 shillings from 13.13 in 2020.
Stanbic Holdings, which operates a bank, a securities brokerage and an insurance agency, raised its dividend to 9.00 shillings per share from 3.80 shillings in 2020.
Its shares on the Nairobi Securities Exchange closed 8.7% higher at the end of 2021, after shedding 18% of its price at the end of 2020.
($1 = 113.8000 Kenyan shillings)
(Reporting by George Obulutsa; Editing by Duncan Miriri)
