HSBC reported pre-tax profits of $5.2 billion for the last three months of last year, beating analysts’ expectations, and said it would consider paying shareholders a special dividend when it wraps up the deal. sale of his Canadian business.
The London-listed bank’s profits rose more than 90% from the same period a year earlier as higher interest rates boosted revenue.
Still, the bank’s pre-tax profit for the full year fell $1.4 billion, partly due to an impairment on the planned sale of its retail banking business in France.
Chief Executive Noel Quinn said “2022 has been another good year for HSBC”, adding: “We have completed the first phase of our transformation and our international connectivity is now supported by good large-scale earnings generation in the whole world”.
The bank approved total dividends of 32 cents per share for 2022, and said the special dividend would be a “priority use of proceeds” from the sale of its Canadian operations to Royal Bank of Canada for $10 billion.
Net interest income hit $32.6 billion for the full year, from $26 billion in 2021, a sign of the extent to which rising interest rates helped boost profits banks. HSBC, one of the largest depository institutions in the world, is particularly sensitive to rate changes.
The bank reported $3.6 billion in expected credit losses and other impairments for the year, which it said reflects “increased economic uncertainty (due) to inflation, higher interest rates interest and supply chain risks” as well as the real estate crisis in China.
