BoP posts Rs347.973mn profit after tax

RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: The Bank of Punjab (BoP) has posted Rs 347.973 million as profit after tax in the year ended December 31, 2011 as compared to after tax loss of Rs 4.029 billion in the year 2010 and Rs 10.1 billion in 2009.

The board of directors of the bank in its meeting, held at Lahore on March 29, announced the bank's annual results for the year 2009, 2010 and 2011.

The bank's board of directors declared that the bank's earning per share stood at Re 0.66 in 2011 compared to per share loss of Rs 7.62 in 2010 and Rs 19.04 in 2009.

After a period of three years, BoP announced its annual results for 2009-11 on Friday.

"The BoP had stopped publishing its accounts since 2008 when the investigations began against the irregularities of the bank in 2007", Bilal Qamar, an analyst at JS Global Capital said.

"The stock's perception has remained negative since 2007 on account of limitation of scope with regards to determining provisions on Rs 8.6 billion loans to three companies, mainly Haris Group", he said. As expected the bank posted losses during 2009 and 2010 on account of high provisions and write off of Rs 10.2 billion and Rs 3.3 billion respectively, he added.

Along with the provisions, net interest income (NII) also remained in red owing to higher deposit rates so as to keep their deposit base intact. However, with reversal in provision against loans of Rs 3.2 billion in 2011 led to a green bottom line for the bank, nonetheless, NII still remained negative. As a result, the bank was able to post a PAT of Rs 347 million in 2011 compared to losses of Rs 4.0 billion and Rs 10.1 billion in 2010 and 2009 respectively, he said.

As far as the balance sheet is concerned BoP's deposit base grew by 25 percent since 2009 to Rs 238 billion while advances and investments witnessed a growth of five percent and 60 percent respectively, during the same period. Bank's equity, which had wiped down to Rs 3.7 billion in 2008, has also recovered and rose to Rs 10.7 billion in 2011, he said.