Nedbank improves on client gains

Nedbank says full-year profit gained 9.4 percent after the retail unit boosted customer numbers and the bank controlled costs.

Johannesburg - Nedbank Group, the South African lender controlled by Old Mutual, said full-year profit gained 9.4 percent after the retail unit boosted customer numbers and the bank controlled costs.

Net income rose to R10.72 billion ($688 million), from R9.8 billion in 2014, the Johannesburg-based company said in a statement on Wednesday. Earnings per share excluding one-time items climbed to R22.42, slightly ahead of the R22.39 median estimate of 11 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Nedbank is seeking growth in the rest of the continent as its home market in South Africa struggles to avoid a recession and a credit-rating downgrade to junk.

The lender, which has slipped to fifth-largest bank by market value in South Africa after being overtaken by Investec, plans to expand in East Africa and use its stake in Togo’s Ecobank Transnational Inc.to benefit from faster growth in sub-Saharan Africa.

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“We currently forecast that growth in diluted headline earnings per share for 2016 will be lower than the growth we achieved in 2015 and below our medium- to long-term target,” Mike Brown, chief executive officer of Nedbank, said in the statement.

This year, Nedbank said it will increase its stake in Mozambique’s Banco Unico to 50 percent plus one share at cost of about 178.4 million rand in the first half.

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