Stock rose 2.6%
Net interest income up 8%
Qatar National Bank (QNB), the Middle East and Africa’s largest bank by assets, reported a slight increase in first-quarter net profit on higher net interest income which helped offset its domestic tax bill.
Government-run QNB made a net profit of QAR4.26 billion ($1.17 billion) in the three months to March 31, up 2.8 percent versus the year-earlier period.
“We see this as a healthy result and maintain our ‘buy’ recommendation on the stock,” Bahrain’s Sico bank wrote in a note on Thursday.
QNB’s stock rose 2.6 percent to QAR 15.65 on Wednesday, trimming its year-to-date decline of 8.5 percent and extending a rebound after slumping to a nine-month low on Monday.
This was against the backdrop of a crash in global stock markets from April 3 to Wednesday, linked to Donald Trump’s April 2 announcement around US tariffs.
The bank’s quarterly net interest income rose 8 percent, or QAR 648 million, to QAR 8.7 billion, deriving most of this increase from its international operations.
QNB has two major foreign subsidiaries. QNB Egypt reported a 2 percent rise in quarterly profit to EGP 6.4 billion ($127 million), although this represented a 28 percent decline in US dollar terms because of a decline in the value of the Egyptian pound.
QNB Turkey’s quarterly profit more than doubled to $93 million.
Some 78 percent of QNB’s loans are domestic. Turkey (10 percent), Egypt (3 percent) and Europe (3 percent) are other notable markets for the lender.
Net fees and commission income grew 11 percent to QAR 1.1 billion.
QNB paid QAR 1.2 billion in quarterly income tax, up 49 percent year on year after Qatar began levying a 15 percent domestic minimum top-up tax this year on companies’ in-country profits.
This is part of a wider effort to introduce a standard corporate tax rate worldwide. The UAE did similar in 2024.
QNB is 50 percent owned by the state-controlled Qatar Investment Authority (QIA).
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