Pan African financial conglomerate, the United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) yesterday announced impressive growth across top and bottom line fundamentals in its audited results for the full-year ended December 31, 2020.
Its 2020 audited financials filed at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Monday, showed that gross earnings grew by 10.8 percent to N620.4 billion, compared to N559.8 billion recorded in the corresponding period of 2019. This came as the bank’s total assets also grew by 37.0 percent to N7.7 trillion in the year under review.
Despite the challenging business environment brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and its resultant effect on the global economy, the UBA’’s Profit Before Tax was impressive at N131.9 billion, compared to N111.3 billion at the end of the 2019 financial year. In the same vein, the Profit After Tax rose by 27.7 percent to N113.8 billion compared to N89.1 billion recorded at the end of the 2019 financial year.
On the cost side, Operating Expenses grew by 10.1 percent to N249.8 billion, as against N217.2 billion in 2019, well below average inflation rate of 13.2 per cent for the year, thus reflecting the bank’s cost effectiveness.
In with its track record of rewarding its shareholders, the bank is proposing a final dividend of N0.35 kobo for every ordinary share of 50 kobo held at the close of business. The final dividend, which is subject to shareholders affirmation at its Annual General Meeting, will bring the total dividend for the year to N0.52kobo as it had earlier paid an interim dividend of N0.17 kobo to owners in the course of the year.