The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) Plc, Mr. Segun Agbaje has assured shareholders of the bank of a continuous robust dividend policy going forward.
GTBank, which is one of the banks that pay dividend twice every year, pays about 50 per cent of its profit to shareholders as dividend. It has already recommended an interim of 25 kobo for the half year (H1) ended June 30, 2016.
Speaking on the bank’s H1 results June 30, 2016 during a conference call last week, Agbaje said the financial institution will not change its payout ratio.
“I don’t see any reason in changing what our dividend payout ratio for as long as you have enough capital and (our) capital adequacy today is over 18 per cent. So for as long as capital adequacy remains that high we are going to keep at that dividend payout ratio,” he said.
Agbaje said the N125 billion profit before target for the year is still on course despite the challenging operating environment.
“In terms of PBT guidance we are staying at N125billion, and for us whatever we have made we are not really separating it strategically from our revaluation gains, because at the time we were making revaluation losses, nobody also asked us why this was happening. So these are strategic decisions we have need to make. But for any of the revaluation gains to go away completely we will have to go to Naira appreciating to 200 to 1 which we think the possibility is very low. So what I will like to say is I believe we can make do with N125billion but I would not want to change the PBT guidelines halfway through the year,” he said.
GTBank has already recorded a PBT of N91.38 billion for the H1 2016.According to Agbaje, the bank had prepared very well for the year having known that it would be a very challenging one.
“Going into the year, we knew it would be a challenging year and we prepared for it by focusing on effective management of the balance sheet and adapting our business model to changing market variables. The quality of our past decisions enabled us navigate the challenges that persisted in the business environment most of the half year period.”