Covid-19 Slashes Dividend Of Bank Shareholders By N7.2bn

The negative impact of the Coronavirus pandemic has reduced the return on investment to shareholders of some Deposit Money Banks by N7.2bn to N37.1bn in the first half of this year.

Nigeria’s top DMBs had during the first half of last year paid the sum of N44.33bn as dividend to shareholders.

The N37.1bn paid in the first half of this year, represents a decline of 16.3 per cent when compared to the N44.33bn paid in the corresponding period of last year.

Analysis of the interim dividend by THE WHISTLER covered Nigeria’s tier- one banks except First Bank of Nigeria Plc.

The banks under review are Zenith Bank Plc, Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, Access Bank Plc, United Bank for Africa and  Stanbic IBTC Plc.

One of Nigeria’s largest banks, Zenith Bank paid its shareholders the sum of N9.42bn as interim dividend. The amount which translates into 17 kobo per share from the half year earnings,  represents a 3 kobo drop from the 20k that was proposed last year.

The bank’s Profit Before Tax for the period was N114.12bn and N111.68bn in 2020 and 2019 respectively.

Guaranty Trust Bank paid N8.83bn as dividend to its numerous shareholders translating into 30k per share. The dividend was paid from the bank’s profit of N94.27bn.

In 2019, the lender declared an interim dividend of 30k per ordinary share for the period ended June 30, from its profit of N133,24bn.

For Access Bank, its Board of Directors proposed the sum of N8.88bn as dividend, representing 25K per ordinary share in the half year of 2020. The bank’s net profit fell to N61bn due to the impact of the pandemic.  

United Bank for Africa also approved the payment of interim dividend of N5.8bn, being 17 kobo for every ordinary share, after realising a net profit of N44.4bn.

The half year 2020 dividend is 3 kobo less that the 20 kobo dividend paid to shareholders in the first half of last year.

For Stanbic IBTC, the bank approved the payment of dividend of N4.2bn translating into a payout of 40 kobo per share in the first half of this year.

The bank’s dividend dropped by 60k from the 100k per share proposed in the first year of 2019 which was worth N10.4bn.

The drop in the proposed dividend of Stanbic IBTC comes despite improved net profit of N45.2bn in half year results, from N36.24bn in 2019.

Nigeria’s oldest bank, First Bank Nigeria during the half year did not propose a dividend despite fair performance which drove its profit to N49.5bn in the first half of 2020, from N31.6bn in the corresponding half of 2019.

The first- tier bank had in April this year proposed a dividend of 38k per share to its shareholders for the 2019 financial period.