GFH Buys Backs Shares, Issues Bonus Shares

Last week, Gulf Finance House (GFH) announced that it would recommend distributing bonus shares. That comes on the heels of a share buyback program launched last year. The idea of a share buyback program is that shares of GFH are cheap and so it makes sense for the company to buy them back. The reverse, issuing bonus shares, makes sense for GFH when shares are expensive. So the two are, on the face of it, inconsistent if executed at the same time.

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The UAE’s Equity Market Performance

My last article regarding the effect of rising interest rates on the UAE’s equity markets sparked quite a bit of debate on LinkedIn and got me to thinking about how the equity markets have been performing. So I looked at the year to date (YTD) return for Abu Dhabi’s market at found out it is 9.82% as of today (source Bloomberg). For Dubai’s financial market the YTD return is -12.62% (source Bloomberg). This doesn’t tell me much about the overall equity performance on a national level. Continue reading

Abraaj’s flawed operating model

A lot has been written recently about Abraaj Capital, the private equity company based in the Dubai International Financial Center. The current focus is around Abraaj’s actions with regards to the potential co-mingling of client funds with its own operating funds. News is updated on a relatively frequent basis about the subject and there is clearly a lot to learn on many fronts. However, it is too early to do a full post-mortem as investigations and legal cases have not come to a conclusion. But there are some things that can be gleaned that could be instructive for investors. The aim of this post is not to judge Abraaj, the courts will do that. The aim is to try to see if there are lessons that can be used by investors to better manage their portfolios. Continue reading

Breaking down FAB’s 2019 numbers for a post-merger picture

First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), the lender created last year from the coming together of National Bank of Abu Dhabi and First Gulf Bank, released its first set of post-merger annual results on Monday. In this week’s column, I’ll be looking at the bank’s pro-forma statements from both last year and 2016, analysing how well the new institution has been doing thus far.

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Understanding First Abu Dhabi Bank's Q3 Financials

I often try to provide alternate ways of looking at issues as a way of adding to the dialogue. Two weeks ago earnings season began and in my first article I looked at the income statement of some banks and in a subsequent article I examined the balance sheet of a bank. This week I link the income statement to the balance sheet statement using First Abu Dhabi Bank’s Q3 financials.

Banking Sector Review

Two weeks ago I looked at the first banks to report their Q3 financial performance. The main thing that I was looking at was source and quality of profits and the increase in profits. If profits came from core business, which is lending, then I considered this better quality profits. If the source of profits was due to sources that were difficult to repeat or maintain, such as operating expense efficiencies, large increases in investment or fee income, or a large decrease in the impairment charge, then I considered this lower quality profits, even though they might be important.

Last week I took a look at another bank but this time examining it from my long running worry that banks might be increasing profits by increasing their loans at a time when the return on assets for some was deteriorating. I was concerned about why some banks might be lending more in a more challenging market. Looking at the balance sheet of the bank that I reviewed, ADCB, it was clear that there was a conscious de-risking of the balance sheet by management followed by a balance sheet optimisation strategy that looked like deploying their balance sheet into stable markets.

This week I look at First Abu Dhabi Bank’s Q3 performance. I’m not trying to make an absolute judgment about performance but rather to explore ways in which to study the performance. Also, keep in mind that FAB completed its merger earlier this year and this will have one-off effects. All numbers are quarterly year on year, i.e. comparing Q3 2017 to Q3 2016. Continue reading

Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank's Q3 financials

Following on last week’s article analysing the Q3 financial performance of Dubai Islamic Bank, Union National Bank and Mashreq, on Wednesday I had a look at how the other banks are performing and was pleasantly suprised when I visited the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank website.

ADCB’s good investor relations

The pleasant surprise was not that ADCB had its financials up; I would expect that given DIB, UNB and Mashreq all managed to. The surprise was that ADCB provided a spreadsheet with its financials. But wait, there’s more. ADCB also provides historical numbers. Astounding, this is true investor relations. For all companies that do this, I sal­ute you. For companies that don’t, please understand that investor relations isn’t just a link on your website to your financial statements.

Dear Securities and Commodities Authority: Please consider requesting all listed companies to provide their financials, including historical, on spreadsheets and make them available on their websites.

ADCB balance sheet strength

Back to ADCB. I’m impressed. Last week, I looked at the income statement and the quality of earnings. This week I’ll look at the balance sheet statement. First some checks. One of the important issues when looking at “deposits and balances due from banks”, which is one of the liquidity pools available to a bank, you need to also look at “due to banks”. If a bank has in the interbank market loaned US$100, this might look good, but if it has borrowed $100 from banks, then the net effect is zero. ADCB has Dh10 billion net due to it in the interbank market. ADCB has a further Dh21bn in cash and on deposit with central banks, usually also considered a high-quality liquidity pool. What does this mean? You have to look at it in terms of the customer deposits of Dh163bn. This means that ADCB’s high-quality liquidity pools are 19 per cent of customer deposits, which is fantastic. But wait, there’s more. Continue reading

Earnings Quality vs Quantum of Earnings

The third quarter (Q3) is over and earnings season has begun as listed companies release their Q3 financials. We’ll take a deep look at these financials, starting with the heart of the economy – the banking sector. My main aim here is to look at the picture that the financials give and try to understand what might be going on in terms of a longer term trend. My focus is the quality of earnings and the direction that earnings are moving in.

I want to take a moment and clarify a few issues. I am looking at earnings and not at creditworthiness, which looks positive given the capital adequacy ratios of these banks. The second point is that I am selecting the larger banks that first released earnings, so selection is not based on financial performance. Indeed, the banks that released earnings first should be applauded for working to provide investors with important transparency and timely provision of information. Continue reading