Nigeria’s mid-tier banks – Fidelity Bank Plc (Fidelity), Union Bank of Nigeria Plc (Union), First City Monument Bank Limited (FCMB), Sterling Bank Plc, and Diamond Bank Plc (Diamond) — will grow their earnings materially over the long-term, says Moody’s Investors Service (“Moody’s”) in a report published yesterday.
However, operating conditions will remain challenging over the next 18 months, as the economy slowly recovers from the 2016 recession. The rating agency’s report is an update to the markets and does not constitute a rating action.
“Nigerian mid-tier banks suffered more severely than the top five largest banks from the 2016 recession and are still recovering,” says Akin Majekodunmi, Vice President and Senior Credit Officer at Moody’s. “Over the longer term, though, we expect their earnings growth prospects to be positive.”
Moody’s views Fidelity, FCMB and Union as best positioned to weather current operating challenges, given their sound capital and liquidity buffers, but expects Diamond to face greater headwinds due to the bank’s larger stock of soured loans and modest foreign-currency liquidity.
Loan performance for the mid-tier banks has deteriorated in recent years but it is likely to stabilise because most foreign-currency loans and loans to the oil and gas sector have been restructured.
Sound capital buffers, which compare favourably to global peer averages, mitigate some of the banks’ high asset risks. Union, for example, raised N50 billion ($162.5 million) via a rights issue late last year and now exhibits the highest tangible common equity in the mid-tier peer group at 21 percent of risk-weighted assets.
Most banks also hold sufficient liquidity to cover upcoming foreign currency obligations; only Diamond and Fidelity have Eurobonds outstanding, while all five banks have bilateral foreign-currency debt outstanding, according to Moody’s.
Profitability, though, is likely to remain subdued over the next 12-18 months, with an average net income to assets ratio of just 1 percent, due to a reduction in the yields of government securities, muted loan growth and high provisioning costs.
Over the longer term, however, the earnings potential for Nigerian mid-tier banks, and the country’s wider banking sector, is positive. This potential rests on banking assets still being small compared to GDP (30%), about 60 percent of adults not having bank accounts, and the retail lending sector remaining underserved.
“Truly, they have strong earning potentials, but this will largely be reflected in what happens in the macro economy as a whole. I will argue that in the short term there will be some challenges in growing their earnings largely because most of the banks are not expanding their balance sheet and interest rates are falling compared to last year,” Tajudeen Ibrahim, head of research at Chapel Hill Denham Securities told BusinessDay.
Ibrahim further said, “Beyond 2018 the Nigeria economy looks promising and we should be able to see the effect of the budget passed this year which would help stimulate growth into next year.”
FCMB recorded a 64.1 percent and 63.6 percent increase year-on-year in Profit before Tax and Profit after Tax respectively in the first quarter 2018. Fidelity banks PBT and PAT increased by 2.5 percent and 7.2 percent respectively in Q1, 2018, Union bank reported a PBT and PAT increase of 19 percent and 17 percent for the same period, while Sterling bank had a 56.3 percent and 65 percent increase in PBT and PAT for the period.
Diamond bank PBT and PAT fell by 75.5 percent and 78.6 percent in Q1, 2018.
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