Bank Bira's after-tax profit up almost five fold
Bank Bira's after-tax profit up almost five fold
JAKARTA (JP): Publicly-listed Bank Bira announced yesterday a surge in its after-tax profit last year to an audited Rp 18 billion (US$8.18 million), up from Rp 3.64 billion in 1993.
The bank's president, Frans Limas, said in a public presentation that the loans extended by the bank had increased by 113 percent over the previous year to Rp 894.1 billion in 1994.
Limas noted that its earnings-per-share for 1994, based on weighted average stock, were Rp 264, with a price-earning ratio of 9.06 times, which is much lower than the banking industry average of 14 times.
"The 1994 net profit was 10 percent higher than the Rp 16.3 billion profit we projected during our initial public offering last July," Limas said.
Bank Bira's Vice President Parveen Gandhi noted that the public presentation was designed to make Bira a very transparent and professional bank.
A director of the bank, Bambang Panutomo, told journalists after the presentation that the bank's after-tax profit for this year was projected to reach Rp 25.2 billion.
Based on the 1995 projection of Rp 25.2 billion net profits, the earning per share will reach Rp 315 with PER of 7.62 times only, he added.
Bambang said that fee-based incomes constituted 20 percent of last year's total earnings.
He said the bank had led in syndicated loans. "Last year, we arranged a domestic syndicated loan of US$227 million," Bambang said.
He noted that his bank had secured four syndicated loans worth $360 million this year. "Our target for this year is between $400 million and $450 million," he said.
Bambang said his bank had set aside 0.9 percent of earning assets to provide for non-performing loans, as compared with the 0.5 percent requirement set by Bank Indonesia, the central bank. However, bad debts are only about 0.1 percent of Bank Bira's total loans of Rp 894 billion, he said.
Last December Bank Bira issued $20 million in floating-rate notes in Hong Kong and Singapore, arranged by Merrill Lynch, to finance exports, Bambang said. (rid)