May 2004 Financial News

Republic Bank posts $300m profit

May 04, 2004

Friday, April 30th 2004


REPUBLIC Bank Ltd has posted an after tax profit of $302.6 million for the half-year ended March 31, 2004.

This was an improvement of 22.6 per cent over the comparative results for 2003.

Shareholders are also smiling as they will receive higher dividends for the bank's stock.

Chairman and managing director Ronald Harford said yesterday: "These results, while very comfortable reflect Banco Mercantil's difficult first half. They also include a full six months of Barbados National Bank Inc and one month of Republic's latest subsidiary, Reliance Stockbrokers Ltd."

Moving forward, Banco Mercantil is expected to stabilise and we will achieve a satisfactory year end performance, he said.

The group's asset base has continued to grow with total assets of $27.8 billion; $7.4 billion or 36.6 per cent greater than recorded for the same period last year.

The main contributors were Barbados National Bank Inc ($4.9 billion) and Banco Mercantil SA ($1.5 billion) as well as $1.1 billion derived from organic growth.

The group's return on assets for this half was 2.51 per cent compared to 2.5 per cent for March 2003.

Return on equity was 18.6 per cent at March, 2004.

The Board of Directors has approved a half-year dividend of 70 cents per share which is an increase of 27.2 per cent over last year's dividend of 55 cents.

This dividend will be paid to shareholders on June 4.

Source: Trinidad Express