RBS First-Half Profit Doubles, Sees 2014 Cost Cuts on Track
By Stephen Morris - Jul 25, 2014
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc said pretax profit almost doubled in the first half and forecast that it will meet a target to cut costs by 1 billion pounds ($1.7 billion) in 2014. The shares soared.
Pretax profit at Britain’s largest state-owned lender may have increased to 2.65 billion pounds from 1.37 billion pounds a year earlier, RBS said in a statement today. Operating profit probably jumped to 2.6 billion pounds from 708 million pounds, according to the results, which were released a week early.
Chief Executive Officer
Ross McEwan, 57, who took over from
Stephen Hester in October, is setting up an internal bad bank, combining divisions and scaling back the investment bank as he strives to shore up earnings at RBS after the lender reported its biggest annual loss since the financial crisis last year. RBS said today that it’s still facing “significant conduct and litigation issues” that could hurt future profit.
“This was an extremely good set of results,” said
Chirantan Barua, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd. in London, who rates RBS shares outperform.
Shares Jump
The
stock jumped as much as 15 percent, its biggest intraday gain since October 2011. The shares were up 14 percent at 375.1 pence as of 8:25 a.m. in London trading.
The government owns 80 percent of RBS and the stock is still below the 407-pence at which the taxpayer would break even on its holding. RBS shares have dropped 8 percent this year, while
Lloyds Banking Group Plc decreased 4.4 percent.
Impairment losses slumped 1.88 billion pounds to 269 million pounds, according to the statement. At its bad bank, RBS reported lower provisions following the sale of assets at more favorable prices. The bank made additional provisions of 150 million pounds for wrongly sold payment-protection insurance and 100 million pounds for interest-rate swaps.
“The results we are posting today show the steady progress we are making as we take the steps to be a much simpler, smaller and fairer bank,” the CEO said in the statement. “These results show that underneath all the noise and huge restructuring of recent years, RBS is a fundamentally stronger bank that can deliver good results for customers and shareholders.”
RBS may be part of a group settlement that banks are negotiating to settle a currency-rigging probe by the Financial Conduct Authority, the U.K.’s market regulator, people familiar with the situation said this week. The FCA is trying to fast-track the process and may levy any fines in the coming months, they said. The group may also include Britain’s
Barclays Plc and HSBC Holdings Plc.
Restructuring Costs
At RBS, restructuring costs are seen at about 5 billion pounds from 2014 to 2017, with a 1.5 billion-pound charge this year, according to the statement. The bank’s headcount dropped by 8,000 over the past year, it said.
Net interest margin, the difference between its income from lending and its cost of funding, widened by 20 basis points to 2.17 percent from a year ago. The bank’s Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of financial strength, rose to 10.1 percent from 8.6 percent at the end of last year.
RBS is preparing to sell shares in its Citizens U.S. consumer bank in an initial public offering to help bolster capital. The unit had an operating profit of 421 million pounds in the first half, up from 353 million pounds a year earlier, with impairment losses doubling to 104 million pounds.
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