Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), Taiwan’s second-largest financial service provider by assets, topped its peers in earnings last month with a net income of NT$4.04 billion (US$135.8 million), up 84 percent from the same period last year, due to strong sales of wealth management products, the company said.
The results equated to earnings per share (EPS) of NT$0.42, meaning that the company ranked first among its 15 listed peers, with a marked improvement seen across major subsidiaries, the company said.
Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank Co (台北富邦銀行) generated NT$1.78 billion in net profit last month, rising 53 percent from the level seen a year ago, thanks to high sales of investment products, Fubon Financial president Victor Kong (龔天行) said.
Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽) saw its net income soar 6.36 times to NT$1.84 billion, mainly caused by investment gains in domestic and foreign equities, Kong said.
The increase has yet to factor in billions of provision recoveries that the life insurer may recognize to reflect real-estate property value rises under new accounting rules changes, Kong said.
The insurer intends to book the value increment on a monthly basis and is awaiting approval from the Financial Supervisory Commission, King said, adding that firms are not allowed to allocate property value gains even though they help to boost a company’s net worth.
Profits at state-run Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控) rose to NT$1.6 billion, more than double the earnings from one month earlier, as core business at the banking arm Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商銀) showed a noticeable pickup, the group said in a statement.
The results equaled an EPS of NT$0.19, meaning that the company tied with Taishin Financial Holdings Co (台新金控) in fourth place, company data showed.
Taishin Financial reported NT$1.39 billion in net income, up 48 percent from a year earlier, the company said in a filing to the stock exchange.
SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) fared well with net income totaling NT$1.16 billion last month, an increase of more than 20 percent from a year earlier and nearly double from December last year, the conglomerate said in a statement, adding that the figures represented an EPS of NT$0.15.
Hua Nan Financial Holdings Co (華南金控), another state-run financial services provider, yesterday posted NT$869 million in net profit for last month, or EPS of NT$0.1, underpinned almost single-handedly by its banking subsidiary Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行).
The lender generated NT$797 million in net income, while the brokerage and non-life insurance unit contributed NT$37 million and NT$79 million respectively, the group said in a statement.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
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