Dubai’s largest lender will hold a general assembly meeting on March 10.
Emirates NBD, Dubai’s biggest lender by assets, said its board approved distributing a cash dividend of 0.40 fils per share for the fiscal year ending December 31 after reporting a 44 per cent surge in profit.
The cash dividend distribution is pending shareholders’ approval at the bank’s general assembly meeting, which is scheduled for March 10, Emirates NBD said on Sunday in a statement to the Dubai Financial Market (DFM), where its shares trade.
The cash dividend will amount to a total of Dh2.5 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, according to the statement.
The proposed cash dividend of 0.40 fils a share translates into a yield of three per cent on a pay-out of 18 per cent, Egyptian investment bank EFG-Hermes said in a separate note on Sunday.
“The dividend was in-line with our expectation,” EFG-Hermes said. “While the dividend per share was the same as last year, the absolute amount of dividend rose 14 per cent year-on-year because of the increase in the bank’s shares due to the rights issue.”
Emirates NBD’s 2019 full-year profit surged 44 per cent to Dh14.5bn, boosted by the partial sale of its stake in payments firm Network International. The results include a gain of Dh4.4bn on the partial disposal of Network International shares and a fair value measurement of the lender’s remaining stake in the firm. Excluding the impact of the transaction, net profit rose 1 per cent year-on-year.
In 2019, Emirates NBD raised the foreign ownership limit of its shares to 20 per cent from 5 per cent and said it plans to further increase the limit to 40 per cent.
