Banking giant Standard Chartered PLC yesterday announced a return of dividends for shareholders after a two-year hiatus as it reported a surge in annual profit following restructuring and cutbacks.
The Asia-focused lender said it would pay out a full-year dividend of US$0.11 per share, citing “improving financial performance and strong capital.”
It also said pretax profit last year jumped 175 percent year-on-year to US$3.01 billion.
Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters described the performance as “steady rather than spectacular,” but said it had improved significantly.
Winters replaced former CEO Peter Sands in 2015 after calls by shareholders for a boardroom cull in response to profit warnings.
The London-based bank was ahead of plans to remove “inefficient cost,” Winters said, adding that it had focused investment in areas including business in China and Africa.
The results fell just short of Bloomberg analysts’ expectations of US$3.1 billion in pretax profit.
Huarong International Securities (華融國際金融) analyst Jackson Wong (黃志陽) said the bank needed to find a new focus for growth, rather than concentrating on cutbacks, adding that HSBC Holdings PLC was in a similar position after missing some profit forecasts last week.
“They don’t have a core way to grow their business,” Wong said. “Because they cannot find growth, they cut more cost, and if they cut more cost, they have less resources to find growth as well.”
However, Wong said Standard Chartered’s dividend payout would keep investors happy.
“Obviously, from the business environment standpoint, they are in a much better shape than last year,” he added.
Standard Chartered swung back to profit in 2016, a year after scoring its first annual loss in more than a quarter of a century as it struggled to cope with the effect of bad debts and misconduct fines.
The London-based bank announced 15,000 job cuts around the world that year and said it would exit or restructure US$100 billion of assets to refocus on affluent retail clients.
China’s economic planning agency yesterday outlined details of measures aimed at boosting the economy, but refrained from major spending initiatives. The piecemeal nature of the plans announced yesterday appeared to disappoint investors who were hoping for bolder moves, and the Shanghai Composite Index gave up a 10 percent initial gain as markets reopened after a weeklong holiday to end 4.59 percent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dived 9.41 percent. Chinese National Development and Reform Commission Chairman Zheng Shanjie (鄭珊潔) said the government would frontload 100 billion yuan (US$14.2 billion) in spending from the government’s budget for next year in addition
Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) suffered its biggest stock decline in more than a month after the company unveiled new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, but did not provide hoped-for information on customers or financial performance. The stock slid 4 percent to US$164.18 on Thursday, the biggest single-day drop since Sept. 3. Shares of the company remain up 11 percent this year. AMD has emerged as the biggest contender to Nvidia Corp in the lucrative market of AI processors. The company’s latest chips would exceed some capabilities of its rival, AMD chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) said at an event hosted by
AVIATION: Despite production issues in the US, the Taoyuan-based airline expects to receive 24 passenger planes on schedule, while one freight plane is delayed The ongoing strike at Boeing Co has had only a minor impact on China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), although the delivery of a new cargo jet might be postponed, CAL chairman Hsieh Su-chien (謝世謙) said on Saturday. The 24 Boeing 787-9 passenger aircraft on order would be delivered on schedule from next year to 2028, while one 777F freight aircraft would be delayed, Hsieh told reporters at a company event. Boeing, which announced a decision on Friday to cut 17,000 jobs — about one-tenth of its workforce — is facing a strike by 33,000 US west coast workers that has halted production
TECH JUGGERNAUT: TSMC shares have more than doubled since ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022, as demand for cutting-edge artificial intelligence chips remains high Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday posted a better-than-expected 39 percent rise in quarterly revenue, assuaging concerns that artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending is beginning to taper off. The main chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported third-quarter sales of NT$759.69 billion (US$23.6 billion), compared with the average analyst projection of NT$748 billion. For last month alone, TSMC reported revenue jumped 39.6 percent year-on-year to NT$251.87 billion. Taiwan’s largest company is to disclose its full third-quarter earnings on Thursday next week and update its outlook. Hsinchu-based TSMC produces the cutting-edge chips needed to train AI. The company now makes more
RSS