Asia United Bank, the financial arm of the Rebisco Group of companies and one of the country’s fastest-growing publicly listed-universal banks, said on Wednesday it will pay P776 million in cash dividends to stockholders.
AUB said in a disclosure to the stock exchange its board of directors approved the declaration of cash dividends amounting to P1.60 per share to stockholders of record as of May 15, 2018.
The dividends are payable in two tranches—P1 per share on May 31, 2018 for record date May 15, 2018, and P0.60 per share on Aug 10, 2018 for record date Aug. 3, 2018.
“The cash dividend will come from the unrestricted retained earnings of the bank,” it said. AUB first declared a cash dividend of P0.67 per share on June 24, 2016, only three years after its initial public offering.
Earlier, AUB said consolidated net income in the first quarter rose 21 percent to P797.7 million year-on-year. The profit translated into a return on assets of 1.7 percent and return on equity of 12.2 percent against year-ago ratios of 1.6 percent and 11.4 percent, respectively.
Boosting the group’s bottom line was the double-digit growth of core lending businesses, particularly the 29.4-percent increase in interest income from loans and receivables, which was the third-highest growth in the local banking industry for the first quarter of 2018.
AUB president Manuel Gomez said the bank remained confident of sustaining the momentum to expand the business further.
“We are taking advantage of our IT innovation to serve our customers better and faster, particularly in our growing consumer lending business,” said Gomez.
The 20-year-old bank has been revolutionizing banking by leveraging on its enhanced IT platform to improve the banking experience for customers. Since it opened at the height of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, AUB has been making use of technology to differentiate its service and operations.