SINGAPORE: Singapore’s biggest bank DBS Group expects its net profit this year to grow from 2023, it said on Thursday (May 2), after posting a 15 per cent rise in first quarter net profit that beat expectations, driven by strong total income growth.
Total income growth was projected to be 1 to 2 percentage points above previous guidance of the mid-single-digits, according to DBS CEO Piyush Gupta’s outlook observations slides accompanying the results.
Group net interest income is expected to be modestly better than 2023 levels, he said in the slides.
Commercial book non-interest income growth was expected to be in the mid-to-high teens per cent on better-than-expected momentum in wealth management and treasury customer sales, according to the slides.
DBS, the first Singapore lender to report this earnings season, said January to March net profit rose to S$2.96 billion (US$2.18 billion) from S$2.57 billion a year earlier on the back of a stable net interest margin, higher fee income and treasury customer sales.
This beat the mean estimate of S$2.48 billion from five analysts, LSEG data showed.
The quarterly net profit was the highest since the S$2.69 billion it reported in the second quarter of 2023.
Return on equity, or ROE, also hit a record high of 19.4 per cent in the first quarter, up from 18.6 per cent a year ago.
DBS, which is also Southeast Asia’s biggest lender, announced a dividend of 54 Singapore cents per share for the first quarter.
DBS’s net interest margin, a key profitability gauge, rose slightly to 2.14 per cent during the quarter from 2.12 per cent a year earlier.
