MANILA, Philippines—First Metro Investment Corp., the investment banking arm of the Metrobank group, grew its first-quarter consolidated net profit by 10.7 percent year-on-year to P431.4 million.
In a press statement, FMIC said the Investment Banking Group contributed P166.8 million of the total revenue generated from investment banking fees. FMIC president Roberto Juanchito Dispo said the company continued to stir up deals driven by prime local corporates’ strong appetite for debt financing through the local capital market.
Deals secured for the quarter included P104-billion in retail Treasury bonds, notes issuances from some of the country’s top corporations like SM Prime Holdings, Meralco, SM Investment Corp., GT Capital, Property Company of Friends and Metrobank’s stock rights issue.
The treasury group contributed P629.9 million which fell by 7.1 percent from a year ago but higher than the P617 million budget for the period. The decline was attributed to lower securities portfolio during the quarter.
Interest income grew by 67.4 percent mainly due to the P251.9 million increase in interest income from loans and receivables, in turn driven by the 17 percent expansion in the loans portfolio.
Against the current economic backdrop, FMIC chair Francisco Sebastian said the investment bank remained on solid footing with total resources at the end of March at P63.1 billion.
Capital funds ended at P10.2 billion which translated to a 19.83-percent capital adequacy ratio, way above the statutory minimum requirement of 10 percent.
“We are very much on the right track as our investment banking deal pipeline remains healthy, especially as we notice corporate borrowers locking in their fundamental needs at fixed rate that are still low, but are expected to rise. We have also lined up major government and private sector bond and notes issuances in the coming months,” Sebastian added.
Moving on to the second quarter of the year, Dispo said: “Despite the volatile market condition in the first quarter, the year still looks optimistic as the financial market recovered quite strongly at the end of the period.”