JEDDAH, 8 July 2006 — The National Commercial Bank (NCB) recorded a net income of SR3.34 billion for the first six months of 2006, an increase of SR908 million or 37.4 percent over the same period in 2005.
NCB’s total operating income also grew by 45.7 percent to SR4.98 billion during the first half of this year compared to SR3.42 billion in the same period of last year.
Total assets of the bank rose by 11.3 percent to SR155.07 billion compared with first half of 2005, net loans and advances increased to SR75.93 billion, an increase of 5.7 percent and customer deposits reached to SR116.99 billion, an increase of 12.8 percent.
NCB’s total shareholder equity grew by 22.6 percent to SR22.27 billion and the ratio of equity to assets stood at a robust 14.4 percent, thus reinforcing its strong capital adequacy ratio and supported by maintaining continuous improvement in profitability.
The bank continued to maintain its high profitability ratios as return on average assets increased to 4.4 percent and the return on average equity was 30.4 percent while earnings per share improved from SR2.70 to SR3.71.
Abdullah Bahamdan, NCB chairman and managing director, said that the General Assembly of shareholders at its extraordinary meeting held on March 25 approved increasing the paid-in capital from SR6 billion to SR9 billion by capitalizing SR3 billion from general reserves to paid-in capital through issuance of one bonus share for eve two shares.
In accordance with the Council of Ministers’ directive, the board of directors in its meeting held on April 24 this year decided to split the bank’s shares into five shares for every one share. Accordingly, the number of shares has now increased from 180 million ordinary shares of SR50 each to 900 million ordinary shares of SR10 each.
Bahamdan said: “The foundation of these excellent results is the strong level of trust that NCB has earned from its loyal customers, variety of bank’s products and services, and improving their quality in addition to the hard work and improved performance of the management and staff of the bank and our care to strengthen the relations and ties with our customers.”
Bahamdan also expressed his deep gratitude to the bank’s clients, shareholders and staff for their continued support to NCB. Driven by its commitment to provide its customers with fast, high quality services, NCB continued to develop its branch network. The number of branches in Kingdom totaled 255 at the end of 2005 compared to 246 in 2004. The number of ATMs was 942 by 2005 and number of Point-of-Sale outlets 6,950.
NCB also converted 66 additional branches into Shariah-compliant in 2005, thus bringing the total number of these branches to 234.
NCB received several international awards, including The banker Middle East Award for “Best Bank in the Middle East”, Euromeny award for “Best Islamic Service Provider Bank in the Middle East”, and ITP award for “Best Retail Bank in Saudi Arabia”, and “Best e-Initiative Bank in Saudi Arabia” award.