Anglo Irish Bank has reported a better than expected 45% increase in annual profits and said it was confident about the year ahead on the back of a strong pipeline of loans. Anglo provides business banking, treasury and wealth management services.
Anglo's pre-tax profits jumped to €504.1m in the year to the end of September from €346.5m a year earlier. Basic earnings per share rose by 47% to 114.53 cent, up from 78.03 cent last year.
A final dividend of 15.04 cent has been proposed, bring the total dividend for the year to 22.56 cent, up 20% on 2003.
Lending work in progress - a key measure of the group's prospects - was almost €4.1 billion at the end of September, also above market expectations. The bank's cost income ratio improved to 27.7%.
Anglo said its business lending recorded the absolute level of net loan growth in the bank's history of €6.3 billion. It said the continuing strength of its franchise throughout its markets and the scalability of its business model is reflected in the 35% growth in loan balances which now stand at €24.4 billion.
In the bank's Treasury operations, customer deposits grew by nearly 45 billion, an increase of 34%. Corporate Treasury Sales also showed strong growth with revenues up some 30%.
The Bank said the group's Wealth Management division also recorded excellent revenue and profit growth. 'Servicing the high net worth sector, the division benefits from the clear synergies with the Bank's client base across other divisions, in particular our lending operations,' it said.
'The strength and proven scalability of our model will, we believe, enable us to deliver above market returns in the future,' commented Chairman Peter Murray. 'The economies of our core markets remain strong and we anticipate significant opportunities in each area of business,' he added.
'Each division has enjoyed a positive start to the current year,' commented outgoing Group Chief Executive Sean FitzPatrick. 'Lending work in progress is at record levels and we look forward to a strong performance for the year to September 2005,' he concluded.
Anglo Irish Bank shares closed 74 cent higher at €16.42 in Dublin.
