By Tristan Veyet
(Reuters) -Erste Group said on Friday it would return cash to shareholders through an annual dividend and a share buyback programme, but the amount disappointed some analysts, sending the Austrian lender’s shares lower.
The company said it would pay out 41.2% of its 2024 adjusted net profit as dividends and 23.7% via a share buyback programme.
Vienna-based Erste Group’s shares were 5.2% lower at 1123 GMT, the worst performers on the Austrian traded index and the pan-european STOXX 600 Banks index.
“The amount of dividend in combination with the share buyback is slightly disappointing for us and it is slightly lower than we expected,” analysts at J&T Banka wrote in a note.
Fourth-quarter operating profit of 1.39 billion euros ($1.44 billion) and a 7.3% rise in net interest income to 1.94 billion euros beat expectations but net profit came in 6% below analysts’ forecast.
“Our results show that we are active in Europe’s growth region, with two-thirds of our profits coming from our banks in Central and Eastern Europe,” CEO Peter Bosek said in a statement.
For 2025, the company aims to achieve a return on tangible equity of around 15% and an operating result broadly in line with last year.
($1 = 0.9630 euros)
(Reporting by Tristan Veyet in Gdansk; Editing by Varun H K, Kirsten Donovan)
