South African lender Absa posts 12% rise in annual earnings

South African lender Absa Group posted a 12.25% rise in full-year headline earnings on Tuesday, as credit impairments declined and the Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB) and Africa regions units reported growth. The country’s third-biggest lender by assets posted headline earnings of 24.7 billion rand ($1.51 billion) in the year ended on December 31. Pre-provision profit increased 4% to 53.5 billion rand.

Revenue grew by 5% to 115.7 billion rand, supported by strong non-interest income growth and a moderate net interest income performance, despite modest retail loan growth and margin compression, Absa said. From a geographic perspective, its 11 rest-of-Africa businesses delivered noticeably stronger earnings growth than South Africa, driven by solid pre-provision profit growth and continued customer expansion, the firm said. “South Africa benefited from a meaningful improvement in credit impairments across several portfolios,” the lender said.

Overall impairments decreased 6% to 13.4 billion rand, with the group’s credit loss ratio- a measure of bad loans against total loans – improving to 88 basis points, the mid-point of Absa’s target range when compared to 103 basis points in 2024. The group declared a final dividend of 850 cents per share.