Zenith Bank H1 Profit Soars By 162% To Pay N0.50 Interim Dividend

Zenith Bank Plc, Nigeria’s biggest lender by market capitalisation, has reported a 162% lieap in first-half (H1) profit after the country’s currency devaluation boosted income.

Brand News Day reports that Zenith Bank booked N355.6 billion ($471.6 million) of foreign-exchange gains in the six months through June when profit jumped to N291.6 billion from N111.3 billion, it said in a regulatory filing.

The gains resulted from the “revaluation of foreign currency-denominated assets and liabilities held in the non-trading books,” it said.

Nigeria allowed its currency to weaken 40% against the dollar in June in reforms aimed at attracting overseas inflows to help revive the struggling economy.

BrandNewsDay Nigeria understands that while the move boosted the income of banks holding overseas assets, manufacturers with foreign-currency loans have reported losses arising from converting a weak naira to make dollar interest payments.

Zenith Bank will pay an interim dividend of 0.50k per share on September 29th, with the cut-off date for names on the registrar records being September 22nd.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian bank has recorded tremendous growth in both the value and volume of electronic product transactions, as its online banking platform continues to gain momentum in its profit.

BrandNewsDay reports that Zenith Bank‘s electronic products growth has validated its investment in state-of-the-art technology as the bank witnessed the value of electronic product transactions rise by 22 per cent to N103.73 billion as of December 2022 from N85 billion it recorded in the previous year.

The commercial bank saw the number of electronic product transactions stand at 2.21 million as of December 2022, which is 14 per cent higher than 2021’s 1.95.