JEDDAH: Saudi Hollandi Bank’s (SHB’s) second-quarter net profit more than doubled, beating analysts’ forecasts, helped by falling operational costs. The bank made a net profit of SR250.5 million ($66.8 million) in the three months to end-June 30, up from SR90.6 million in the year-earlier period, it said in a statement on the Saudi bourse website on Saturday. The bank’s operational profit reached SR478.8 million, down from SR552.5 million in the same period a year earlier.
RIYADH: Saudi Arabian Fertilizers Co. (SAFCO) reported an 89-percent rise in second quarter net profit due to the sale of land, beating forecasts, while growth in operating margins narrowed from the first quarter. SAFCO, which produces urea and ammonia, made a net profit of SR907 million ($241.9 million) in the three months to end-June compared to SR480 million in the same period a year-earlier, the firm said in a bourse statement on Saturday.
RIYADH: Riyad Bank, Saudi Arabia’s third-largest bank by market value, posted a 16.5 percent fall in second-quarter net profit mainly after lending income declined for the second straight quarter. Riyad made SR766 million ($204.3 million) in the three months to end-June after SR918 million in the same period a year ago, according to a stock market statement on Saturday. Net lending income, known in Saudi Arabia as special fees net income, fell 10.5 percent to SR1.03 billion, after it fell 9 percent in the first quarter.
RIYADH: Saudi-based Almarai Co., the Gulf’s biggest dairy firm by market value, posted a better-than-expected 19.5 percent rise in second-quarter net profit, beating forecasts, after it raised its market share. The firm, in which Savola Group holds a 29.9 percent stake, made SR343.1 million ($91.5 million) in the three months to end-June against SR287.1 million a year earlier, it said in a statement on the Saudi bourse website on Saturday.
MOSCOW: Russian flagship airline Aeroflot expects to acquire 22 Boeing (BA.N) Dreamliners and 22 Airbus A350s by 2016 as it expands its fleet, CEO Vitaly Savelyev told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. “We expect to receive 22 Dreamliners, that is the Boeing-787s, by 2016, and we also expect 22 aircraft of the Airbus-350 model, which is currently being developed, to enter into service,” Savelyev said according to RIA news agency. However, Putin urged the executive to purchase more locally made planes.
TOKYO: Japan and Russia have agreed to jointly build a liquefied natural gas plant in Vladivostok, with five million tons of output to be shipped to Japan annually, a newspaper said Saturday. An official accord will be signed in November when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visits Japan to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo, the business daily Nikkei said.