Abanca’s profit grew by 40.7% in recurring terms in 2022 to 217 million euros, in a year boosted by the company’s good performance and by the control of credit costs, the Galician bank announced this Friday.
“The main factors explaining this evolution are the good performance of the financial margin (+14.2%) and the increase in services (+9.4%),” said Abanca in a statement, also highlighting explains “the rise in insurance sales and the contribution of collection and payment services”.
The bank says it will end the year “in a position of great financial solidity, consolidating it as one of the soundest banking institutions in the Spanish financial system”.
Abanca’s coverage of doubtful assets was 83.2% in 2022, while Texas’s ratio was 25.4%, its NPL ratio was 2.0%, and its ratio of mortgaged assets to balance sheet was 0.3%.
In turn, banking services revenues should grow by 9.2%, collections and payments by 16.9% and off-balance sheet products by 2.3%, resulting in a base margin improvement of 12.9%.
Costs grew less than revenues, pushing the efficiency ratio up to 67.7%, in a year in which the operating margin before provisions increased by 5.0% – even with a result of minus 86 million euros compared to the previous year.
The cost of risk “remained contained”, at 0.18%, with Abanca attributing this performance “to the good quality of the loan portfolio and high coverage”.
As for Portugal, the bank’s second largest market, it performed “similarly on credit”, with a 97.1% increase in mortgage lending and 12.9% in corporate lending.
At the press conference for the presentation of the results, the president of the bank, Juan Carlos Escotet Rodríguez, ruled out new integrations in Portugal for the time being.
“Portugal remains a strategic market for us and we clearly want to keep growing, but we can’t say we have any business in our portfolio,” he said, pointing out that the macroeconomic position in Portugal is “better than in Spain”.
In 2022, Abanca also increased the weight of banking with customers in its result by five percentage points, from 89% in 2021 to 94% in the year under review.
In the group’s activity, there was an increase of 0.8% in mortgage loans, 11.7% in consumer credit and 17.5% in loans to small and medium-sized enterprises and the self-employed.
During the year under review, Abanca also agreed to acquire Targobank Spain from Crédit Mutuel – the operation is scheduled to be completed in the second half of this year – with an expected turnover of more than EUR 111 billion.
For this year, the bank has decided to reduce the percentage of earnings allocated to the payment of dividends from 40% to 25%, in an effort to “strengthen its capacity for inorganic growth and continue to generate value through of business activities”.
In terms of solvency, Abanca’s capital ratio amounted to 16.4% (12.5% capital of maximum CET1 quality) and the excess over regulatory requirements amounted to EUR 1,268 million.
In 2022, the turnover managed by Abanca was 106,424 million euros, of which receivables from customers amounted to 45,167 million euros and fundraising amounted to 61,256 million euros. In the same period, 110,000 new customers were added.
Overall, there was a 6.7% increase in the number of “value customers” and more than 350,000 cards issued, while the number of POS terminals also increased by 5.9%.
Source: DN
