BDO ‘16 profit hits P26.1B

The country’s largest lender, BDO Unibank Inc., posted a record high net income of P26.1 billion last year, meeting the earnings goal committed to investors for 2016.

Last year’s profit marked a 4.4-percent growth from the P25 billion by the bank in 2015, driven by strong results across BDO’s core businesses.

BDO’s customer loan book rose 16 percent to P1.5 trillion, while total deposits increased by 15 percent to P1.9 trillion on the sustained growth of the bank’s low-cost deposits, BDO disclosed to the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday.

Net interest income was up by 15 percent to P65.6 billion.

Fee-based income grew by 15 percent to P22.2 billion, with insurance premium contributing P8 billion.

BDO said its efforts at diversifying its income stream had started to bear fruit.

Fee income sources compensated for the decline in trading gains to P4.8 billion.

Gross operating income hit P107.2 billion.

On the expenditure side, BDO’s operating expenses advanced by 27 percent to P70.1 billion, reflecting the consolidation of One Network Bank (ONB) and BDO Life Insurance. Excluding these, operating expenses would have risen by only 11 percent, the bank said.

Meanwhile, BDO set aside P3.8 billion in loan loss provisions for the year even as gross non-performing loan (NPL) ratio held steady at 1.3 percent while NPL cover remained high at 139 percent.

BDO’s capital base stood at P217.5 billion, with capital adequacy ratio (CAR) and common equity tier 1 (CET1) ratio at 12.4 percent and 10.7 percent, respectively.

In January, the bank raised a total of P60 billion in fresh capital, boosting the bank’s consolidated CAR to an estimated 15.7 percent. This is seen to allow the bank to support its medium-term targets and provide a comfortable buffer over higher minimum capital requirements with the staggered implementation of the “Domestic Systemically Important Bank” (DSIB) surcharge. —DORIS DUMLAO-ABADILLA