JOHANNESBURG – Capitec Bank reported a 20 percent rise in half-year profit on Wednesday, helped by strong client growth.
Headline earnings per share (EPS) came in at 2,128 cents in six months ended August, compared with 1 769 cents a year earlier.
Headline EPS, the widely watched profit measure in South Africa, strips out certain one-off items.
Capitec attracted 109 000 additional active clients every month in the past six months, it said, bringing the total number to 10.5 million customers.
Launched in 2001 as a micro-lending business, Capitec is positioning itself as a fully fledged bank with no-frills account, savings and insurance and credit card products to cut its reliance on unsecured loans, which rely solely on a customer’s promise to pay it back.
The lender is also among bidders for Mercantile Bank – a unit of the Portuguese state-owned banking group CGD – a transaction that will help the Stellenbosch-based company branch out into business banking.
Capitec, which competes with Nedbank, Standard Bank , FirstRand and Absa Group, said net income from transaction fees surged 32 percent to R3.1 billion, while net income from lending slipped 4 percent to R6.1 billion.
The lender, which earlier this year was accused by short-seller Viceroy Research to have overstated its assets and income, will give shareholders an interim dividend of 630 cents per share, up 20 percent.
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