biginvestors
11 years ago
BOI valued at one-third of boom value as shares top 20c
SARAH MCCABE – 10 AUGUST 2013
SHARES in Bank of Ireland topped 20c for the first time in two-and-a-half years yesterday as the market continued to reward the bank's latest six-month results. That values the bank at around a third of its value at the peak of the boom.
Its share price has more than doubled since the start of the year, rising 10pc over the past week alone after chief executive Richie Boucher said it was "close to profit". Yesterday it was the biggest gainer on the benchmark ISEQ Index.
A share price of 20c values the country's biggest bank at around €6bn. The bank has issued so many new shares since the financial crisis that a price rise of just 40c would see the bank valued at the same market capitalisation it enjoyed pre-recession.
Its share price came close to the 20c mark in May, but was then almost halved following a major slump in June. The latest rebound comes after the bank revealed that losses narrowed significantly between January and June, to €455m from €1.1bn in the same period in 2012.
Confidence in the bank was buoyed by the outlook Mr Boucher gave for the rest of the year. He said he was not concerned about the so-called "stress tests" that would soon test its financial strength. He said historical loan losses were becoming less of a problem and that the bank had protected its core franchises in Ireland through the crisis.
He added that Bank of Ireland could continue to grow its lending business even if the overall economy failed to grow because it is winning business from rivals.
Confidence was also boosted by a cut to deposit costs and an increase to lending rates. In the first six months of the year, the bank's net interest margin – the difference between what it pays out in interest on deposits versus what it earns on loans – increased to 1.65pc from 1.20pc. "People are really responding to this," said John McLoughlin, banking analyst at Goodbody Stockbrokers.
"The bank is confident it will hit a 2pc margin next year – it was previously thought that this would take until 2015."
Concerns over mortgage arrears have also calmed.
"We think that over the whole cycle, Bank of Ireland will only offer writedowns on about 9pc of mortgages in arrears" said Mr McLoughlin. "Across all of the country's banks, impairment charges from bad loans are close to peaking.
"Even though the number of mortgages in arrears on Bank of Ireland's books is still increasing, this is being offset by reductions in other types of bad loans."
Irish Independent
biginvestors
11 years ago
Torpey buys 1 million Bank of Ireland shares
08:59, Post Reporter
Michael Torpey, the chief executive of Bank of Ireland’s corporate and treasury division, bought 1 million shares in bank at 19.1 cent each, according to a company statement.
Torpey bought the shares on 2nd August, the statement said. Torpey joined bank in March, having previously held senior positions in the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) and subsequently in the Department of Finance as Head of Banking and Head of the Shareholder Management Unit.
.....
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biginvestors
11 years ago
UPDATE 3-Bank of Ireland says its four-year crisis is over.
Fri Aug 2, 2013 3:03am EDT
* H1 net interest margin 1.65 pct vs 1.34 pct in H2 2012
* Margin target of 2 percent a little less challenging-CEO
* H1 underlying loss 383 mln euros vs 933 mln eur year ago
* Shares jump more than 5 percent
By Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Bank of Ireland's net interest margin grew sharply in the first half of the year as the only Irish lender to escape nationalisation declared itself a normal bank once again after four difficult years.
The bank said on Friday its net interest margin - a key metric that shows how profitable its lending is - jumped 31 basis points to 1.65 percent in the six months to the end of June, helping it trim its underlying loss by almost two thirds.
The greater than expected increase compared to an 8 basis point rise reported by main rival Allied Irish Banks on Thursday. State-owned lender AIB is targeting a more modest margin of 1.32 or 1.33 percent for the second half of the year.
Irish banks faced huge losses after property prices began to tumble in 2008, pushing some lenders into state hands, closing others and eventually seeing the government seek an EU/IMF bailout.
With provisions for impaired loans falling, mortgage arrears growth slowing and the bank comfortable with the resilience of its deposit base, Bank of Ireland Chief Executive Richie Boucher said the 15 percent state-owned lender was firmly on the mend.
Shares in the bank opened 5.4 percent higher at 0.19 euro.
"It's been a hard four years," Boucher told reporters.
"But we now have a normalised bank which has strong momentum towards profitability... We are in the more pleasant place of having the challenges of ordinary businessmen and women."
The momentum pointed to earlier this year saw its underlying loss before tax fall to 383 million euros ($507 million) from 933 million euros a year ago. Excluding a provision of 780 million euros, it made an operating profit of 380 million euros.
Ahead of sector-wide stress tests due next year, Boucher said Bank of Ireland, which earlier this month won a battle with European regulators to keep its life insurance arm, had also completed its own internal capital review during the past six months and that it was comfortable with its level of capital.
"My eyes are glued to the net interest margin," said Stephen Lyons, credit analyst at Davy Stockbrokers, which expects to upgrade its estimates for the bank, believing it looks well on track to return to profitability next year.
"Most metrics are similarly trending positively but I keep getting drawn back to that margin and its substantial jump."
The margin was well ahead of the 1.50 forecast by six analysts surveyed by Reuters thanks to a repricing of products and the removal of a costly state guarantee on deposits.
Bank of Ireland said that, by the end of June, the margin was higher than the reported six-month average of 1.65 percent. Boucher said its goal of increasing it to 2 percent was now a little less challenging compared to six months ago.
It moved the bank closer to its third main rival, Royal Bank of Scotland's Irish unit Ulster Bank, which reported on Friday that its net interest margin was unchanged on the year at 1.85 percent as its losses almost halved.
GRADUAL ECONOMIC RECOVERY
The problem for Bank of Ireland and other Irish lenders is that they are applying a better margin to a shrinking asset base. Bank of Ireland's loan book decreased a further 6 percent to 87 billion euros as loan repayments continued to outpace new lending despite a pick-up in demand in the last couple of months.
Another major issue for the recuperating sector is the high level of mortgage arrears resulting from a devastating housing crash and unemployment which, although falling, remains among the highest in Europe at 13.5 percent.
The bank's proportion of owner-occupiers in arrears for more than 90 days rose to 7.9 percent, the lowest in the industry where the average is 12.3 percent. Buy-to-let mortgage holders in trouble amounted to 17.6 percent, closer to the 19.7 percent average reported by the central bank.
While AIB's chief executive said more than one in five of its mortgage holders in arrears were strategically defaulting, Boucher said half of the "meaningful portfolio" of homeowners in trouble that had initially refused to engage with the bank had now had their mortgages restructured.
Despite Ireland slumping back into its first recession in four years late last year and economists predicting a second successive year of scant growth, Boucher said the economy was recovering as expected.
"We're seeing signs of a gradual, gradual, slow recovery which is what we anticipated. There will be ups and downs, and it's never going to go in exactly a smooth path," he said.
biginvestors
11 years ago
Bank of Ireland has this morning reported operating profit before impairment provisions of €380m, compared with €37m in the first half of 2012.
The bank said its total income in the first half of 2013 was €1,188m, an increase of 36pc of €313m over the same period in 2012, due primarily to the increase in its net interest margin and lower ELG (eligible liabilities guarantee) fees.
Pre-tax losses for the period were €504m, compared with €1,260m in H1 2012.
The bank said it repaid €6m of ECB funding during the first half of 2013 and has repaid €24bn or 70pc of that funding since the start of the bailout programme. It said has returned €3.9bn of the €4.8bn invested in the group by the State.
It said approvals of new and increased credit for SMEs were €1.9bn in the first half of 2013, which was up 14pc on 2012.
And it said it is actively working with challenged Irish mortgage and SME customers to provide sustainable restructuring of their loans. It said owner occupied default arrears of three months or more were 10.52pc on 30 June 2013, compared to 9.88pc at the end of December and 9.22pc at the end of June 2012.
“In the first half of 2013, while economic conditions remained challenging, we continued to deliver on our strategic objectives,” said chief executive Richie Boucher. “The actions we have taken and the investments we have been making in our core franchises have continued the momentum to enable us to move closer to profitability.”
http://businessandleadership.com/business/item/42155-bank-of-ireland-moving/02/08/2013
biginvestors
11 years ago
Bailed-out banks on block as markets surge
By Patrick Jenkins
Today, five years on from the shaming injections of public money they needed to stay alive, there is a very different story to tell
There have been few better investments than European banks over the past year. Consider this clutch: Lloyds Banking Group, whose share price is up 130 per cent compared with July 2012; Bank of Ireland and Belgium’s KBC, both up 75 per cent; even Royal Bank of Scotland, for all its troubles, has seen its stock rise by nearly half.
Those names, all of which have trounced the European bank average gain of 39 per cent, are part of a special club of bailed-out banks. Today, five years on from the shaming injections of public money they needed to stay alive, there is a very different story to tell. For the first time since the financial crisis, it is easy to imagine governments exiting their vast bank investments – in some cases potentially starting the sale within days.
More
The UK seems tempted to follow suit very soon, encouraged both by buoyant share prices and a fast-growing appetite among fund managers for the kind of bank stocks they have been underweight on since the crisis.
Officials are even toying with kicking off the process on the back of Lloyds’ second-quarter results on Thursday, potentially placing as much as £5bn of stock with fund managers from the UK and abroad, and a selection of sovereign wealth funds.
Treasury officials have made clear for some time that the sell-off could begin by the end of the year. But there is a mounting feeling that share valuations cannot last. Waiting until a more traditional window in September or October could be risky if markets grow nervous about the solidity of a European economic recovery.
There seems little chance of the stock being sold in the short term for more than the 74p a share price at which the government injected its £21bn of bailout money nearly five years ago. But with the shares trading at just over 68p, getting within 10 per cent of the break-even level looks feasible, even after a placing discount of 4 or 5 per cent.
Lloyds’ underlying recovery looks to be accelerating, too. The bank is still feeling the effects of the crisis, in terms of loan losses from the toxic assets it inherited with its HBOS acquisition. But the deal has left the bank with dominant market shares of 25 to 30 per cent across its high-street banking operations – all the more appealing if the UK economy really is in recovery, as recent economic data suggest.
For the first time since the financial crisis, it is easy to imagine governments exiting their vast bank investments – in some cases potentially starting the sale within days
Could Bank of Ireland be next? Although its bailout by the Irish government was structured in a more complex manner, it, too, has good reason to focus on buoyant capital markets.
By next March, it must repay €1.8bn of government-owned preference shares or face a rise in the coupon payments it must make on the instruments. Some investors are betting that the bank will persuade the government to renegotiate those terms, but if it cannot it could be well advised to raise money while it can.
Bank equity placings and rights issues are becoming quite the fashion these days. Barclays’ plan for a £5bn-plus issue on Tuesday, following Deutsche Bank’s €3bn placing a couple of months ago, are all about complying with regulators’ toughening capital requirements. But bailed-out banks have been at it, too, largely to pay back governments. KBC, for example, raised €1.25bn at the end of last year to fund the repayment of its €3.5bn Belgian government bailout. It will not say whether today’s healthier equity valuations would encourage it to raise more still to pay back the final few billion it owes the Flemish authorities.
There are always exceptions to a trend. Commerzbank tried a similar trick, launching a €2.5bn rights issue in May to help repay state aid. But the German bank is so swamped by legacy losses and government support that investors have no faith in it any more. In contrast to the booming share prices of rivals, Commerzbank’s stock has been falling steadily since the crisis and is close to a record low, making it an obvious target to be taken over or put into run-off. Someone should put it out of its misery.
Patrick Jenkins is the Financial Times’ banking editor
biginvestors
11 years ago
Further signs Irish banking system is stabilising
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
By John Walsh, Business Correspondent
There are further signs the Irish banking system is stabilising with deposit volumes unchanged in June compared with the previous month at €152.03bn, according to the Department of Finance.
Drawings from the ECB by Permanent TSB, AIB and Bank of Ireland continued to fall in June to stand at €34.76bn at the end of the month.
Banks operating in Ireland — both the covered and non-covered banks — continue to reduce their borrowing from the ECB.
“During June total utilisation of ECB facilities by banks in Ireland declined by €0.8bn (c -2%) to €46.1bn — it’s lowest level since September 2008,” said the department.
The figures reflect the ongoing deleveraging by the Irish banking system. During the massive credit expansion leading up to the financial crash, Irish banks became exposed to the wholesale money markets in an effort to ramp up their mostly property- related lending activities.
But when the sub-prime crisis erupted, the wholesale money markets seized up and funding for the Irish banks dried up.
When the Government was forced to accept and EU/IMF bailout in 2010, deleveraging targets for the banks was part of the overall programme.
However, in an effort to shrink their balance sheets, the domestic banks have had to scale back their lending which has had a huge impact on the flow of credit to the SME and corporate sectors.
The banks face stress tests as part of an EU-wide review next March.
But the Central Bank governor, Patrick Honohan, has said the banks will have to raise further capital over the medium term to meet Basel III regulatory requirements, which are being phased in between now and 2019.
This will put huge pressure on the banking system across the eurozone. The Financial Times’ reported yesterday that Deutsche Bank plans to shrink its balance sheet by one-fifth in order to meet the new capital requirements.
Analysts have raised concerns that if banks throughout the region are all required to raise their capital levels over the next few years, then its will constrain business lending and hamper recovery.
Pressure is growing on the ECB to develop non-bank funding channels, such as a securitisation market for SMEs, although, ECB president Mario Draghi has dampened expectations that a big bazooka will be unveiled over the short to medium term.
© Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved
biginvestors
11 years ago
Bank of Ireland has won European Commission approval to abandon an originally-envisaged sale of its life insurance unit, New Ireland.
Under a new plan, it will:
pull out of British business and corporate banking.
shed its ICS Building Society distribution platform in Ireland.
The sale of New Ireland had been ordered in return for approving state aid to the bank.
The European Commission said the recent sale of Ireland´s largest life insurance company had affected the number of potential buyers for New Ireland, increasing the likelihood of selling it with losses. It also said a divestment would negatively affect BOI´s capital and capacity to return to profitability and would slow down progress towards long term viability.
The revised plan involves the sale or retirement of the ICS Building Society’s distribution platform together with the sale, if required by the acquirer, of up to €1 billion of mortgage assets.
The intermediary channel accounted for an average of 15 per cent of new lending over the past three years.
In Britain, the bank must exit from business banking and corporate banking activities, including the deleveraging of the current businesses, which had gross loan assets of around €4.6 billion at December 2012.
Bank of Ireland said it would attempt to accelerate the deleveraging of these businesses by way of sale.
However it added that it would not have an obligation to sell these businesses at disposal discounts greater than those agreed with the European Commission.
This measure does not impact on British consumer banking businesses.
The New Ireland Group is the second largest life and pension manufacturer in the Republic of Ireland with a new business market share of around 24% as of 31 December 2012, serving some 600,000 customers.
At the end of 2012, the business had a net book value of €816 million and generated operating profit before investment variances and economic assumption changes of €77 million.
.....
biginvestors
12 years ago
Bank of Ireland Stock Rating Upgraded by Deutsche Bank (IRE)
June 21st, 2013 - by Kyle Jackson
Deutsche Bank upgraded shares of Bank of Ireland (NYSE: IRE) from a sell rating to a hold rating in a research report sent to investors on Wednesday morning, TheFlyOnTheWall.com reports.
Several other analysts have also recently commented on the stock. Analysts at Goldman Sachs downgraded shares of Bank of Ireland from a neutral rating to a sell rating in a research note to investors on Monday, June 10th. Analysts at HSBC initiated coverage on shares of Bank of Ireland in a research note to investors on Wednesday, June 5th. They set an underweight rating on the stock.
Shares of Bank of Ireland (NYSE: IRE) traded down 2.08% during mid-day trading on Wednesday, hitting $8.02. Bank of Ireland has a 52 week low of $4.97 and a 52 week high of $10.40. The stock’s 50-day moving average is currently $9.39. The company’s market cap is $6.037 billion.
Bank of Ireland and its subsidiaries provide a range of banking and other financial services. It operates in five segments: Retail Republic of Ireland, Bank of Ireland Life, UK Financial Services, Capital Markets and Group Centre.
biginvestors
12 years ago
BIGGEST MOVER THIS YEAR !
Bank of Ireland Says Interest Margins Improved in Early 2013
By Joe Brennan - Apr 24, 2013 9:58 AM GMT+0200 Facebook Share LinkedIn Google +1 0 Comments
Print QUEUEQ
Bank of Ireland Plc, the nation’s largest bank by assets, said lending margins continued to improve, following a rebound in the second half of 2012.
Costs from the Irish state’s banking guarantee, which was withdrawn last month, “will reduce quickly” and boost income this year, the Dublin-based bank said in a statement today. Bank of Ireland, which paid 388 million euros ($505 million) last year in guarantee fees, said deposits have been unaffected by the government’s move.
Bank of Ireland’s net interest margin, the difference between the rate at which it borrows and lends to customers, widened to 1.34 percent in the second half of last year from 1.20 percent in the previous six months, as the bank cut deposit rates and raised customers’ borrowing costs. Chief Executive Officer Richie Boucher, 54, cut the workforce by 9 percent to about 12,000 last year and shrank the lender’s loan book and central-bank reliance as bad-debt losses decreased.
Bank of Ireland’s “rebuilding of the net interest margin and the in-line performance on impairments is helpful,” Eamonn Hughes, an analyst at Dublin-based Goodbody Stockbrokers, said in a note. Still, the analyst said that stock has jumped 20 percent since he upgraded it to buy on March 6.
Bank of Ireland rose 1.8 percent to 17.4 euro cents at 8:57 a.m. in Dublin, having increased to as high as 17.5 cents. That’s the highest level in almost two years.
‘Positive Outlook’
The bank said it has shrunk its loan book to 90 billion euros and its loan-to-deposit ratio has fallen to 120 percent ahead of a year-end target set by the central bank. The bank’s loan book contracted 9 percent last year to 92.6 billion euros, as it sold and ran down some non-core loan portfolios.
Bank of Ireland’s loan-loss charge fell to 1.72 billion euros in 2012 from 1.94 billion euros a year earlier, marking a third straight year of decline, it said earlier this month.
Central bank funding has decreased to 11 billion euros, the bank said. It stood at 12 billion euros at the end of 2012.
“Although we expect the bank’s outlook is positive, at current levels, the bank is trading toward the top end of its pricing range in our view,” said Muna Muleya, an analyst at Dublin-based Merrion Capital.
To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Brennan in Dublin at jbrennan29@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.net
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dshade
12 years ago
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