Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) has record­ed $503 mil­lion in first quar­ter prof­its.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, RFHL Vin­cent Pereira an­nounced the prof­it at­trib­ut­able to its share­hold­ers for the three-month pe­ri­od end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023.

The re­lease ex­plained that ex­clud­ing one-off loss­es re­port­ed in the pri­or pe­ri­od, core prof­its af­ter tax and non-con­trol­ling in­ter­est in­creased by $33 mil­lion or 6.9 per cent, while prof­its at­trib­ut­able to its share­hold­ers in­creased by $103 mil­lion or 26 per cent over the $400 mil­lion re­port­ed in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of the last fi­nan­cial year.

RFHL al­so saw an in­crease in to­tal as­sets, as it stood at $115.2 bil­lion at De­cem­ber 31, 2023, ris­ing by $1.7 bil­lion or 1.46 per cent over the to­tal as­sets at De­cem­ber 2022. This in­crease, the re­lease stat­ed, was fu­elled by growth in the loans and in­vest­ments port­fo­lios across all sub­sidiaries.

Pereira said, “The Group’s first quar­ter re­sults re­flect the im­pact of this strong growth in loans and in­vest­ments, com­bined with the con­tin­ued strong in­ter­est rate en­vi­ron­ment for our US$ de­nom­i­nat­ed sub­sidiaries. All sub­sidiaries record­ed strong per­for­mances de­spite the on­go­ing eco­nom­ic chal­lenges in some en­vi­ron­ments. The over­all per­for­mance con­tin­ues to high­light the val­ue of the Group’s in­ter­na­tion­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy and the re­silience of our op­er­a­tions.”

Pereira said Based on the re­sults, the RFHL board of di­rec­tors de­clared its first ever quar­ter­ly in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.55 per share payable on Feb­ru­ary 29, 2024 to all share­hold­ers on record at Feb­ru­ary 15, 2024.

The RFHL an­nounced in a news re­lease on Oc­to­ber 18, 2023, that its board of di­rec­tor had ap­proved chang­ing the fre­quen­cy of the pay­ment of div­i­dends to share­hold­ers from twice a year to four times a year. That de­ci­sion was tak­en on Oc­to­ber 13, 2023 with the change start­ing in fis­cal 2024, ac­cord­ing to Kim­ber­ly Erri­ah-Ali, the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion’s group gen­er­al coun­sel/cor­po­rate sec­re­tary.

In its 2023 fi­nan­cial year, which end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, RFHL paid a to­tal of $5.20 a share to its share­hold­ers. The fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion paid out $4.10 a share to its share­hold­ers on De­cem­ber 1, 2023, and $1.10 a share on May 31, 2023. The 2023 div­i­dend was 15.55 more than the $4.50 the com­pa­ny paid out in 2022.

RFHL de­clared $1.75 bil­lion in prof­it af­ter tax­a­tion and non-con­trol­ling in 2023, com­pared to the $1.52 bil­lion in 2022.

“The group con­tin­ues to work on im­prov­ing its em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment, cus­tomer fo­cus and dig­i­tal strat­e­gy to con­tin­ue adding val­ue to our cus­tomers, staff and stake­hold­ers. While chal­lenges per­sist, we be­lieve that we are well po­si­tioned to nav­i­gate the con­tin­ued glob­al eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ties,” said the RFHL chair­man.