June 17 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's First Investment Bank, or Fibank, [BUL:FIB] said that its shareholders approved a proposal to skip dividend distribution for 2021, instead capitalising its entire net profit for last year.
The retained profit will form part of the lender's core Tier 1 capital, Fibank said in a bourse filing issued after the general meeting held on Thursday.
Last year, the bank's standalone net profit increased to 100.1 million levs ($53.7 million/51.2 million euro) from 38.9 million levs in 2020, when it skipped dividend distribution as well.
The bank's total after-tax profit rose to 111.4 million levs in 2021 from 45.5 million levs a year earlier, according to the filing.
Total revenue from banking operations since the start of 2022 amounted to 108.4 million levs, representing a year-on-year increase of nearly 14%. Fibank's capital adequacy ratio (CAR), a measure of a bank's capital presented as a percentage of its risk-weighted credit exposures, reached 19.62% as of end-March. Its Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) ratio, a measure of financial strength, stood at 16.09% at the end of the first three months of 2022.
Fibank's consolidated assets exceeded 12 billion levs in the first quarter of the current year, it said.
Shares in Fibank, which have increased in value by 14.5% in the past 12 months, closed flat on Thursday at 1.97 levs.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)