Maybank posted higher earnings for the financial year 2021 with profit before tax (PBT) rising 25.8% year-on-year to RM10.89 billion, compared with the RM8.66 billion a year earlier. Net profit rose to RM8.10 billion, 24.9% higher than the RM6.48 billion recorded a year earlier.
The better results were driven by improving regional economic outlook that supported the Group’s higher operating income and reduced impairment losses by 36.6% as it had taken pre-emptive provisioning for potentially bad loans and financial investments since the pandemic started in 2020.
Net operating income grew 2.8% to RM25.45 billion, tracking Malaysia’s economic growth of 3.1% in 2021. This was achieved on the back of a 14.6% Y-o-Y increase in total net fund-based income to RM19.09 billion as a result of stronger loan growth as well as robust improvement in current account and savings accounts, which helped net interest margin (NIM) expand 22 bps Y-o-Y. It was, however, partially offset by a 21.6% decline in net fee-based income to RM6.36 billion mainly from the lower net gain in investment income and marked-to-market losses on the fixed income portfolio held by its insurance unit due to rising yields.
Growth in costs, meanwhile, was contained at 2.6%, well below income growth, resulting in pre-provisioning operating profit coming in higher at RM13.93 billion from RM13.54 billion a year ago.
For the fourth quarter, the Group recorded a 36.5% rise in PBT to RM2.72 billion compared to the previous year, benefitting from the pick up in regional economies during the period. Net profit meanwhile, rose 33.8% to RM2.06 billion.
A similar trend was also seen in the Q-o-Q performance with net profit growing 22.1% to RM2.06 billion in 4QFY21 versus RM1.68 billion in 3QFY21 as net impairment losses fell 40.6% to RM668.4 million while net operating income grew 2.4% to RM6.30 billion.
Maybank Chairman, Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa said that despite the challenging environment owing to the resurgence of the pandemic and reimplementation of movement restrictions during a good part of the year, the Group remained resilient and delivered a commendable performance. This was mainly due to the Group’s diligent asset and liability management, prudent credit lending and asset quality practices, disciplined cost management, and strong governance.
Meanwhile, Group President & CEO Dato’ Sri Abdul Farid Alias said that the Group’s ability to deliver a better set of results in 2021 was underpinned by the risk posture to be prudent from the onset of the pandemic in terms of credit and risk management, the pursuit of responsible growth and maintaining good shareholder returns.
As of 31 December 2021, Maybank Group had a total of RM82.9 billion of loans under some form of repayment assistance and restructuring across the region covering consumer, retail SME, and Business Banking customers. Of this, RM79.9 billion was from Malaysia covering various relief programmes such as PEMERKASA Plus, PEMULIH, and URUS.
The Board of Directors has declared a single-tier second interim dividend of 30 sen per share, comprising an electable portion of 7.5 sen per share under its Dividend Reinvestment Plan. This brings the full-year dividend to 58 sen per share and translates into a payout ratio of 84.5% or RM6.84 billion in total.
