DBS Q1 profit up 9% to $1.65b

Strong interest income offset declining wealth management, brokerage and investment banking fees.

DBS profits rose 9% YoY to $1.65b in Q1 as strong interest income more than cushioned the impact of declining earnings from wealth management, brokerage and investment banking, the bank said in its financial statement. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, profits surged 25%.

Net interest income rose 9% to $2.31b with loans growing 5% to $347b. The loan growth was driven by non-trade corporate loans and consumer loans which rose 11% and 3% respectively to offset an 11% decline in trade loans. Net interest margin, a common measure of profitability, also expanded 5bp to 1.88% amidst higher rates in Singapore and Hong Kong.

On the other hand, net fee income fell 2% to $730m as wealth management, brokerage and investment banking fee income declined 12% in aggregate which DBS attributes to a high year ago base. Card fees increased 21% to $189m from higher customer transactions across the region. Transaction service fees and loan-related fees rose to $188m and $108m respectively.

Also read: Banks may fall from grace as non-interest income takes blow

Other non-interest income rose 5% to $511m as increases in trading income and net gain on investment securities more than offset a property gain of $86m a year ago. Trading income rose 20% to $443m from gains in interest rate and credit activities. Net gain on investment securities also doubled to $53m from a low year-ago base.

Asset quality continued to be benign with non-performing assets (NPA) remaining stable from the previous quarter at $5.6b as new non-performing asset formation remained low. The bad loan ratio also held steady at 1.5%. Total allowances fell to $76m, half the level a year ago and two-fifths the previous quarter.

Deposits were stable from the previous quarter and rose 5% from a year ago to $395b. The liquidity coverage ratio of 137% and the net stable funding ratio of 111% were both above the regulatory requirement of 100%. Similarly, the Common Equity Tier-1 ratio rose 0.2 percentage points from the previous quarter to 14.1% as earnings accretion outpaced risk-weighted asset growth.

The bank declared a dividend payout of 30 cents per share and that dividends will be paid four times a year instead of twice annually.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia