Chair­man of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) Vin­cent Pereira has an­nounced an af­ter tax prof­it of $1.526 bil­lion for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022.

This rep­re­sents an in­crease of $218 mil­lion or 16.7 per cent over the 2021 re­port­ed prof­its of $1.308 bil­lion, and $55 mil­lion or 3.5 per cent be­low the 2019 re­port­ed prof­its of $1.581 bil­lion.

A state­ment from RFHL said this per­for­mance re­flects the im­pact of the Group’s ex­pan­sion, rev­enue di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and cost man­age­ment strate­gies, the uptick in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty as well as the in­crease in yields in the US dol­lar de­nom­i­nat­ed fi­nan­cial in­stru­ments held across the Group.  

“Over the past fi­nan­cial year, the coun­tries in which RFHL op­er­ates con­tin­ued to re­lax their COVID-19 pro­to­cols. Bor­ders and schools were re-opened, re­stric­tions on gath­er­ings and pub­lic mask man­dates were re­moved and al­most all com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties re­sumed. The re­sult­ing resur­gence of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly in the tourism de­pen­dent economies, au­gured well for the group,” Pereira said.

He al­so not­ed that through­out this pe­ri­od RFHL con­tin­ued to serve its stake­hold­ers, pro­vid­ing sup­port to cus­tomers as they nav­i­gat­ed new chal­lenges to their busi­ness mod­el.

Pereira added the or­gan­i­sa­tion al­so worked to im­prove its cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence through in­creased in­vest­ment in its dig­i­tal of­fer­ings.

“Dur­ing 2022 we strength­ened our sus­tain­abil­i­ty fo­cus, adding ca­pac­i­ty and ex­e­cu­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ty to the group through the cre­ation of an Of­fice of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, through our group flag­ship Pow­er to Make a Dif­fer­ence Pro­gramme we are forg­ing new, val­ued part­ner­ships with NGOs and groups whose spe­cif­ic fo­cus aligns to the pil­lars of our sus­tain­abil­i­ty and En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Gov­er­nance (ESG) ef­fort.  By con­tin­u­ing our fo­cus on re­spon­si­ble bank­ing and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, our goal is to ac­tive­ly shape a more sus­tain­able fu­ture for all,” Pereira said.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment the board has de­clared a fi­nal div­i­dend of $3.45 (2021: $3.00) per share, which brings the to­tal div­i­dend to $735.8 mil­lion or $4.50 (2021: $4.00) per share for the fis­cal year, an in­crease of 12.5 per cent in to­tal div­i­dend pay­ment over 2021, and in line with the 2019 div­i­dend pay­ment.

At a clos­ing share price of $140.01, this div­i­dend rep­re­sents a div­i­dend yield of 3.21 per cent as 2021 was 2.93 per cent. 

Pereira re­it­er­at­ed that with­in an en­vi­ron­ment that pre­sent­ed both “chal­lenges and un­cer­tain­ty” the group has de­liv­ered a good per­for­mance for the year end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022.  

He said this suc­cess could not have been re­alised with­out the tal­ent­ed, re­silient and ded­i­cat­ed staff across each of the 14 coun­tries in which the group op­er­ates.