Nigerian Tier-2 lender Fidelity Bank has announced gross earnings of N105.8 billion for the first half of 2020, a slight improvement on the N103.7 billion that the bank declared for the same period in 2019.
The bank’s interest income rose to N87.1 billion from N84.3 billion, while interest expenses fell from N48.9 billion to N39.3 billion in 2019, leaving the net interest income at N48.3 billion in the first half of 2020 when compared to N36.9 billion in the second half of 2019.
The results showed that the fees and commission income fell from N13.1 billion to N9.5 billion, while the fees and commission expenses rose from N2.4 billion to N2.8 billion .
In the period under consideration, Fidelity Bank reported N8.6 billion as other operating income compared with N4.8 billion in the corresponding period of 2019, while the personnel expenses jumped to N12.2 billion from N11.8 billion, with the other operating expenses rising to N31.6 billion from N29.2 billion.
However, the profit before tax increased to N12.0 billion from N9.8 billion, while the profit after tax increased to N11.3 billion from N8.5 billion, with the earnings per share closing at 39 kobo versus 29 kobo in H1 2019.