Lahore - The HBL has announced 2Q2016 consolidated earnings of Rs6.9 billion as compared to restated Rs5.7 billion in the same period last year.

Alongside the results, the bank announced the cash dividend of Rs3.5/share in addition to Rs3.5/share announced during 1Q2016.

NII of the bank during 2Q2016 upped by 7 percent YoY to Rs21.2 billion due to volumetric deposit growth and improving deposit mix. NII remained in line with estimations.

Non-interest income on the other hand was down by 19 percent YoY to Rs7.8 billion in 2Q2016. This is mainly due to sharp fall in capital gains as the bank booked gains of Rs1.4 billion compared to Rs 3.1 billion in the same period last year.

The non-interest income remained higher than the estimated Rs7.8 billion due to higher than assumed capital gains of Rs700 million for the quarter. 

On the expense side, provisioning expense of HBL was down by 9 percent YoY to Rs986 million in 2Q2016, which is in line with the industry trend of declining provisioning expense. Non-markup expense was up 5 percent to Rs13.6 billion, but remained lower than expectations.

On QoQ basis, earnings were down by 24 percent mainly due to higher effective tax during the quarter as the government had imposed 4 percent super tax in the Federal Budget FY17.

However, pre-tax profits were up by 4 percent QoQ, driven by 19 percent uptick in non-markup income (higher capital gains) and 5 percent increase in NII.