Bank of East Asia Ltd (東亞銀行), Hong Kong’s third-biggest lender by market value, said first-half profit rose 49 percent as a stock market recovery spurred trading revenue.
Net income in the six months ended June 30 rose to HK$1.17 billion (US$151 million), or HK$0.64 a share, from a restated HK$785 million, or HK$0.43 a share, a year earlier, the bank said in a statement yesterday. Profit beat the HK$1 billion median estimate of seven analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
Chairman David Li (李國寶), 70, vowed in March to rein in spending to help the bank recover from its first loss in four decades, caused by HK$1 billion in impairment charges and a 23 percent jump in expenses. Operating costs were little changed from the previous six months at HK$3.04 billion, the bank said.
Bank of East Asia “has controlled costs in a difficult economic environment,” said Nick Lord, an analyst at Macquarie Securities Ltd who has an “outperform” rating on Bank of East Asia, before the announcement.
The bank’s shares reversed earlier losses and gained 2.2 percent at 2:36pm after falling in morning trading. The stock has risen 77 percent this year, the third-best performance among 11 Hong Kong-traded financial companies tracked by the Hang Seng Finance Index, which rose 42 percent over the same period.
The bank posted a HK$746 million loss in the second half of last year after bad-loan charges more than doubled. It booked HK$3.5 billion of losses last year after selling all its holdings of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). CDOs, which repackage bonds, loans and credit-default swaps and use the income to pay investors, plunged as lending froze after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Year-earlier figures were restated because of “unauthorized manipulation” of the valuation of equity derivatives held by the bank, the statement said.
Bank of East Asia yesterday predicted a “continued recovery” in the global economy in the second half as the US starts to emerge from a housing-led slump.
The bank said impairment losses rose to HK$493 million from HK$315 million a year earlier. It made a gain of HK$874 million from trading, compared with a loss of HK$213 million. Net interest income fell to HK$3.23 billion in the first half from HK$3.48 billion a year earlier, while net fee and commission income dropped to HK$1.01 billion from HK$1.19 billion.
Operating profit from the bank’s mainland Chinese operation fell to HK$731 million from HK$842 million as non-interest income declined 35 percent to HK$184 million.
The bank and rivals such as HSBC Holdings Plc have been expanding in China in the past two years as the nation’s booming economy drove demand for loans and investment products.
Bank of East Asia, the first foreign lender to issue debit cards in China, last month raised 4 billion yuan (US$586 million) in Hong Kong selling bonds denominated in the currency for the first time. It also aims to sell shares in Shanghai by the second half of next year, deputy chief executive officer Brian Li (李民斌) said this month.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is