BSP Financial Group Limited (2020)
In the first quarter of 2021, South Pacific Financial Group Ltd recorded a net profit of K203 million.
According to the bank, this is a 2.6 per cent decrease from the first quarter of 2020, owing to a decrease in net insurance revenue and a rise in computing costs.
Some highlights included net assets of K3.6 billion, a cost to income ratio of 40.3 per cent, a capital adequacy ratio of 25 per cent, a provision coverage ratio of 5.7 per cent, a market capitalisation of K5.6 billion, and earnings per share of 43 toea.
The last 12 months had been tough, according to Group Chairman Sir Kostas Constantinou, "but we did well with the profits that we achieved."
“We have an excellent staff, everybody’s committed,” he said. “It is unfortunate with the Covid-19, but we progress forward now with the inoculation of our staff who are behind it. The intention is to do most of the branches. We have had problems through the Pacific, places like Samoa, Tonga which have been restricted because of tourism. The Cook Islands have opened up so we are yet to see what happens.
In spite of this, Sir Kostas remained positive.
“Good times are coming for Papua New Guinea with the recent announcements on the progress of some of the country’s resource projects,” he said. “We are fortunate that we have the Papua LNG project that has been successfully completed and is proceeding with Total who’s the lead partner doing the upstream and Exxon doing the downstream. These projects are K48 billion and right on our doorstep and there’s not a lot of countries in the world that have these types of projects.”
The news about P'Nyang was also embraced, according to Sir Kostas.
Reference:
The National (24 May 2021). Bank records first quarter profit of K203 million
