Despite a marginally lower net interest income (NII), ACLEDA Bank Plc’s net profit rose nine percent to $38.5 million in its first quarter ended January 31, 2023 (Q123), from $35.4 million a year ago.

According to its filing with Cambodia Securities Exchange, quarterly revenue increased 15.8 percent to $202.4 million (826.8 trillion riel) from $174.8 million last year, while operating profit expanded 33.5 percent.

Acleda said its strong performance was mainly due to the “effectiveness of a broad range of banking products and services in the digital era, increase in customers and effective cost management”.

Additionally, group operations are better, stronger and successful because of its loan portfolio growth on the back of high demand, particularly in the SME segment, as well as growth of deposits and other transactional products and services.

dynamic_detail_1

These, it said, are related to the bank’s continuous development in digital platforms, providing customers with innovative and modern financial products and services.

Its gross loan outstanding in the first quarter of 2023 rose 13.7 percent from the corresponding period in 2022.

The bank’s return on average equity in Q1’23 stood at 2.9 percent, whereas the return on average asset was 0.42 percent.

The ratio of non-performing loans expanded to 3.21 percent for the quarter under review, compared to 2.9 percent as of December 31, 2022.

dynamic_detail_2

As of March 31, the bank recorded total assets of $9.4 billion, up 4.5 percent from $9.03 billion as at December 31, 2022.

In the next 30 years, ACLEDA is focused on becoming a digital bank with a “sophisticated data lakenouse” in Cambodia providing quality, security and trust.

The bank's efficient delivery ecosystem including self-service banking outlets, virtual teller machines, which enable self-account openings, and card printing serve as a “powerful catalyst for the next wave of growth”.

It added that recovery in manufacturing exports and expansion of agricultural commodity exports will augur well for the bank, seeing that its bulk of borrowers are involved in the agri-related businesses.

“The bank can do better in 2023 because [we] have invested heavily in our digital infrastructure, built a large high security data centre to store.

“The construction of Disaster Recovery Data Centre would help data storage in a highly protected environment. With the digital infrastructure and upgraded products and services, the bank is confident of facing future challenges,” it said.

At press time, the counter remained unchanged at 10,300 riel with 33,505 shares traded for a market capitalisation of 4.5 trillion riel ($1.08 billion).

At press time, the counter remained unchanged at 10,340 riel with 20,964 shares traded for a market capitalisation of 4.5 trillion riel ($1.09 billion).

sangeetha.amarthalingam@kiripost.com