The 2012 first half-year results from Unibank show high growth in profits, income, customer deposits and total assets.
The Bank recorded a pre-tax profit of GH˘12million at the end of June 2012. This represents 67% Year-On-Year growth and 45% over a budgeted figure of GH˘8million.
Interest income, although short of budget by GH˘4million, posted a growth of 41%. Loans and overdrafts contributed 90% of the Bank’s interest income. 8% of the interest income is attributable to investment in government securities and 2% from Nostro accounts with GIB and others.
Interest expense has also recorded 53% growth and is just 7% above projection. Fixed Deposits and call accounts are the major contributors of the interest expense.
Net interest income is GH˘5.539million (i.e. 21%) below budget while total income is 9% below budget.
Loans and advances grew from GH˘281million in June 2011 to GH˘429million in June 2012, representing a growth of 53%.
The Bank’s customer deposits recorded growth of 66.17%. Fixed Deposits are 57% of total customer deposits while demand deposits (thus current, forex and foreign accounts) are only 30% of total deposits.
Low expense deposits such as savings and uniFund constitute 12%. Call deposits constitute 1%. Total assets growth also stood 55%, but fell short of budget by 3%.
However, the Bank recorded a negative variance of GH˘24.824million in total assets; largely due to the fact that customer deposits was still below projection, which contributed to the loan book failing below budget by GH˘25million.
The Bank’s Loan-to-Deposit-Ratio (LDR) stood at 74.21% against 80.78% in June last year. Fixed Deposits continue to be the dominate component of the Bank’s deposit mix, although it has declined by 2% between May and June 2012.
Loans and overdrafts constitute 90% of the interest income, while interest paid on FDs and call accounts is 83% of the overall interest expense incurred during the period under review.
Cost/income ratio declined by 2.28% over the June 2011 figure of 67.68% -- mainly due to the increases in net interest income and non-funded income, besides prudent management of operating expenses.
Commission & fees grew by 26% during the period under review. Revaluation gain and forex trading made a strong showing during the period. They grew by 384% and 116% respectively. The forex trading was almost equal to the budget.
Although staff cost grew by 32%, it recorded a positive variance of GH˘2.605million. Total operating costs were up by 39% due to increases in Administrative variable cost, Administrative fixed costs, and marketing & business development costs. But it is below budget by 14%.
Occupancy cost has declined by 12% and was also 48% below budget. This is mainly due to changes in treatment of rent paid on leasehold premises.
An amount of GH˘1.488million was set aside in respect to credit impairment losses as against a budget of GH˘3.450million. This left a positive variance of GH˘1.962million. Actual bad-debts written-off amounted to GH˘0.160million.
Cost-income ratio has decreased by 2.28% over the previous year’s figure of 67.68%. The reduction was mainly due to the increase in total income and below-budget performance of staff costs, occupancy costs etc.
Non-funded income to total income ratio increased by 6.20%% over last year’s of figure of 40.45%. The ratio now stands at 46.65%.
