Cost cuts, market revival help Bradford & Bingley to better earnings |
|
|
Published
:
Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:25
|
LONDON: Mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley Plc. said its underlying profits for 2005 grew 11 per cent as it cut costs and lent more money with house prices going up.
The West Yorkshire-based bank, Britain's ninth biggest, said it had an underlying pretax profit of 310.1 million pounds for the year ended 31 December 2005, compared with 280.4 million pounds for the earlier year. Its residential lending rose 10 per cent to 26.1 billion pounds.
The bank said Thursday improvement in mortgage demand as fears of a crash in the property market receded and a very tight control on costs brought in these results. It cut down underlying costs by 7 per cent to 264.8 million pounds during the year.
The bank said recovery in the housing market appeared to be sustainable and the buy-to-let market it specialises in is particularly buoyant. It had record new residential lending in the second half of the year at 4.7 billion pounds, almost double of the 2.7 billion pounds in the first half and it claimed a strong pipeline of new business in 2006.
The bank's chief executive Steven Crawshaw said while the whole mortgage market came back strongly in the second half of 2005, the confidence in the buy-to-let business is very high at the moment. He was confident of robust future growth.
Crawshaw had predicted in December that the buy-to-let market will probably outperform the total mortgage market in Britain.
The bank had written off 123.2 million pounds it received from the disposal of businesses in 2004. It had also cut down its staff by more than half to 3,150 people.
Bradford & Bingley will pay a dividend of 18.3 pence per share, up 7 per cent from the previous year. It shares closed at 450-1/4 pence, valuing it at 2.9 billion pounds.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Stock
Quotes * |
|
NASDAQ
|
|
1423.08 |
+25.01 (
1.76 %)
|
| SYMBOL (
2008-12-02 ) |
| LAST |
CHANGE
|
|
CARNIVAL
(
11:35am )
|
|
1347.00 |
+51.00 (
4.02 %)
|
| SYMBOL (
2008-12-02 )
|
| LAST |
CHANGE
|
| SYMBOL (
2008-12-02 )
|
| LAST |
CHANGE
|
|
|
Print this Story
Bradford & Bingley confident of beating profit forecast 