The first half of the 2024 financial year has marked a major milestone for the NCBA Group. The bank has surpassed the Sh. 100 billion in shareholder funds in the six month period ended June 30, 2024.
In this period, shareholder funds grew by 14.8 per cent to stand at Sh. 101.4 billion from the Sh. 88.3 billion shareholder funds that were recorded in the same period the previous year.
According to the NCBA Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer John Gachora, this milestone means that the bank is getting closer to fulfilling the promises it made for the merger between the NIC Bank and the Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA).
“We said one of the aspirations for the merger was to have a large capital base that would give us the capacity to support the large companies that operate in this region,” he said.
“I think that we now have a large capital base and it continues to grow. We can now do deals that are of significant size. The maximum lending we can do is 25 per cent of our capital.”
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Mr. Gachora further pointed out that with Sh. 100 billion worth of capital, the NCBAÂ Group can lend up to Sh. 25 billion to a single customer which is a significant lending even where this customer is the government.
“We want to be catalysts to local businesses, local corporates, and we want to support large infrastructure projects and this is what this large capital base means. We also want to be a safe and secure bank as shown by this amount of capital base,” said Mr. Gachora.
During the same period under review, the NCBA recorded growths in net profit and core earnings per share (EPS). The net profit increased to Sh. 9.8 billion per cent from the Sh. 9.3 billion that was recorded in the same half the previous year.
Core earnings per share grew by 5 per cent to Sh. 6 from the previous half’s Sh. 5.7. This was mainly driven by a growth in total operating income to Sh. 31.4 billion.
Customer deposits increased from Sh. 516.6 billion in the first half of 2023 to Sh. 528.9 billion in the first half of 2024. Total assets on the other hand grew from Sh. 660.3 billion in the first six months of 2023 to Sh. 689.1 billion in the current period under review.
From the financial performance of this half, shareholders of the NCBA Group will get an interim dividend payout of Sh. 2.25 per share. In a similar period the previous year, NCBA Group had announced an interim dividend pay of Sh. 1.75 which was equivalent to a payout of Sh. 2.8 billion.
