The nation’s two largest financial service providers, Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) and Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), saw their profitability slow drastically last month due to reduced dividend income, according to separate stock exchange filings yesterday.
Cathay Financial, the nation’s largest financial conglomerate by assets, posted NT$1.42 billion (US$48.62 million) in net profit last month, declining 57.61 percent from July and 20.67 percent from the same period last year, the filing indicated.
Cumulative net income totaled NT$11.4 billion in the first eight months of the year, translating into earnings of NT$1.10 per share.
Cathay Financial spokesman Alan Lee (李偉正) attributed the slowdown to lower dividend income, which peaked in July.
“It is a comfort that the life insurance subsidiary turned a bigger profit last month after its hedging strategy started to pay off,” Lee said by telephone.
Hedging costs, which eroded 3.5 percent of Cathay Life Insurance Co’s (國泰人壽) foreign investment in the first half of the year, might be kept below 2 percent in the second half, the company forecast last week.
The insurer, the nation’s largest by market share, generated a net income of NT$410 million last month on better sales of higher yield products, the filing said.
Fubon Financial, the nation’s second-largest financial service provider, reported a modest net income of NT$1.82 billion last month, plunging 85.85 percent from July and 43.3 percent from a year earlier, the filing said.
For the first eight months of the year, net profit totaled NT$29.83 billion, translating into earnings per share of NT$3.32 from NT$3.54 a month earlier.
Nonetheless, Fubon remained the most profitable among its peers, the filing showed.
Cash dividend income contributed NT$1.16 billion last month, compared with NT$5.2 billion in July, Fubon said in the filing.
In addition, the group recognized most of the gain from its sale of Fubon Multimedia Technology Co Ltd (富邦媒體科技) in July, raising its comparison base, the filing showed.
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