KBC Group: Second-quarter result of 925 million euros

KBC Group – overview (consolidated, IFRS)	2Q2024	1Q2024	2Q2023	1H2024	1H2023
Net result (in millions of EUR)	925	506	966	1 431	1 848
Basic earnings per share (in EUR)	2.25	1.18	2.29	3.44	4.37
Breakdown of the net result by business unit (in millions of EUR)
Belgium	519	243	576	761	875
Czech Republic	244	197	276	441	461
International Markets	224	146	190	370	298
Group Centre	-61	-80	-76	-141	215
Parent shareholders’ equity per share (in EUR, end of period)	53.2	54.9	51.2	53.2	51.2

‘We recorded a net profit of 925 million euros in the second quarter of 2024. Compared to the result for the previous quarter, our total income benefited from several factors, including higher levels of net interest income, higher net fee and commission income, solid insurance revenues and better trading & fair value income, as well as the seasonal peak in dividend income. Costs were down significantly, since the bulk of the bank and insurance taxes for the full year is always recorded in the first quarter of the year. Disregarding bank and insurance taxes, costs edged up by 1% quarter-on-quarter. Loan loss impairment charges were up on the very modest level recorded in the previous quarter, resulting in – what is still – a very low credit cost ratio of 9 basis points in the first half of 2024.

Consequently, when adding up the results for the first and second quarters, our net profit for the first half of 2024 amounted to 1 431 million euros. At first sight, this is much lower than the result for the year-earlier period, but that period had benefited from a positive 0.4-billion-euro one-off gain on the sale of the Irish loan and deposit books. Excluding that one-off gain, our half-yearly profit was in line with the year-earlier figure.

Our loan portfolio continued to expand, increasing by 2% quarter-on-quarter and by 4% year-on-year, with growth being recorded in each of the group’s core countries. Customer deposits were up 2% quarter-on-quarter and were stable year-on-year. The share of bank and insurance products sold digitally continued to rise: based on a selection of core products, around 55% of our banking and 27% of insurance products were sold through a digital channel, up from 50% and 24% a year ago. Of paramount importance in our digitalisation journey is our personal digital assistant Kate, which we continuously develop further with the aim of ensuring maximum convenience for and support of our customers. To date, around 4.8 million customers have already used Kate, an increase of approximately 40% on the year-earlier figure.

Our solvency position remained strong, with a fully loaded common equity ratio of 15.1% at the end of June 2024. The solvency ratio for KBC Insurance under the Solvency II framework amounted to 200%. Our liquidity position remained very solid too, as illustrated by an LCR of 160% and NSFR of 139%.

To summarise, our overall performance in the first half of 2024 was excellent yet again.

As regards our share buyback programme, which started in August 2023 and ended on July 31st, 2024, we have bought back a total of approximately 21 million shares for a total consideration of 1.3 billion euros. In line with our general dividend policy, we will pay an interim dividend of 1 euro per share in November 2024 as an advance on the total dividend for financial year 2024. Furthermore, we also decided to increase our guidance for net interest income for full-year 2024 to 5.5 billion euros ballpark figure, up from our initial guidance of 5.3 to 5.5 billion euros.

I’d like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all our employees for their contribution to our group’s continued success.

I also wish to thank all our customers, shareholders and all other stakeholders for their trust and support, and to assure them that we remain committed to being the reference in bank-insurance and innovation in all our home markets.’

Johan Thijs
Chief Executive Officer

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