The First Cit­i­zens Group, yes­ter­day de­clared au­dit­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $957 mil­lion for its fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, 23.16 per cent more than the $777 mil­lion the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned earned in its 2023 fi­nan­cial year. In re­marks on the group’s per­for­mance, First Cit­i­zens chair­man, An­tho­ny Smart not­ed that the group’s to­tal as­sets stood at $47.1 bil­lion as at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, an in­crease of 4.84 per cent when com­pared to the 44.90 bil­lion for the 2023 fi­nan­cial year.

The fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny re­port­ed a 23.05 per cent in­crease in its earn­ings per share, which rose to $3.79 from $3.08 in its 2024 fi­nan­cial year.

That earn­ings im­prove­ment re­sult­ed in the board of the bank de­cid­ing to de­clare a div­i­dend of $0.88 per share for the fi­nal quar­ter of the fi­nan­cial year.

That div­i­dend, which will be paid on De­cem­ber 28, brings the to­tal div­i­dend pay­out for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year to $2.37 per share, which is an 18.5 per cent in­crease over 2023.

The div­i­dend of $2.37 means First Cit­i­zens would pay­out 62.5 per cent of its earn­ings in its 2024 fi­nan­cial year.

Ac­cord­ing to Smart, “These ac­com­plish­ments were fur­ther com­ple­ment­ed in Oc­to­ber 2024 when Stan­dard and Poor’s reaf­firmed an in­vest­ment grade rat­ing of BBB-/A-3 with a sta­ble out­look for First Cit­i­zens Bank Ltd.”