Security Bank profit up 37% to P1.83B in 9 mos

Security Bank Corp. (SBC) has reported a 37 percent surge in its net income to P1.83 billion in the first nine months of 2007, nearly equaling the P1.9-billion profit for the whole of 2006.

In a statement, the bank said its loan portfolio rose by 26 percent to P42.3 billion, boosted  by its year-to-date net interest income to P3.4 billion.

SBC president and chief executive officer Alberto S. Villarosa said growth was helped along by building quality loan assets with an enhanced yield profile.

“Likewise, we are leveraging on the customer relationships cultivated over the last few years to further improve the other income component of our business in anticipation of a more challenging environment for generating trading gains,” he added.

SBC chief financial officer Carlos M. Borromeo said service charges grew by 51 percent to close at P648 million.

“This resulted from the increased customer base and deposit base we have built. We have also reflected a 69 percent increase in miscellaneous income to P450 million with reduction in asset disposal losses that characterized the same nine month period the previous year,” he said.

The healthy growth in these other income components offset the 12 percent reduction in foreign exchange and trading gains to close the period at P959 million.

Year-to-date operating expenses registered P3.2 billion, up 17 percent over the P2.8 million recorded a year earlier, arising from a combination of investments in the bank’s workforce and one-time expenses.

Borromeo said the bank put in significant amount of focus to building an increased customer base that contributed greatly to the exemplary growth in fees and service charges.

“This is in consonance with our strategy to build a greater component of recurring revenues in anticipation of a more challenging environment for generating opportunistic trading gain revenues,” he added.

The combined results translate to earnings per share for the nine-month period of P5.56 versus P4.11 per share the prior year. Share prices rose from P65.50 at the start of the year to the current level of P76 per share.