Page 100 - RusRPTApr21

8.1.8 Sberbank news
The supervisory board of Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank has recommended paying 18.7 rubles per share, or 56% of net profit under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), in dividends for 2020, CEO German Gref said on Friday. “Today the supervisory board supported a proposal of the company’s management to pay dividends at the level of last year. This is 56% in percentage terms – this is a record dividend in percentage and the same amount as last year,” he said. The total dividend payments will amount to 422.4bn rubles. The bank’s shareholders will consider the recommendation at an annual general meeting on April 23, while the dividend payment will be made in May. The government holds 52.32% in Sberbank.
Sberbank reported its 4Q20 IFRS results review with net profit 15% above consensus, Sova Capital reports.
The beat in net profit was thanks to higher-than-expected NII and lower-than-projected opex. During the conference call later today, we expect CEO Herman Gref to make optimistic comments on SBER’s expected 2021 financial performance.
SBER released its 4Q20 IFRS results this morning, and the company will hold a conference call later today at 9:00 New York/14:00 London/15:00 CET/17:00 Moscow to discuss the results. The y/y drop in NIM was close to 20bps, on our calculations, better than the 30bps y/y contraction we initially expected. A slight decline in funding costs in 4Q20 somewhat softened the much larger drop in asset yields, helping quarterly NII to outperform both our and consensus estimates by RUB10bn.
Cost of risk increased to 1.8% in 4Q20 vs. 1.4% in 3Q20, but the provision charge was in line with consensus. We think that SBER might try to aim for a visible drop in cost of risk this year thanks to Russia's economic rebound, although this will not necessarily be explicitly stated during today's conference call. The Stage 3 loan coverage ratio added a few percentage points during 4Q20.
Quarterly opex came in 5% below consensus, as SBER continued to enjoy the results of its cost optimization program launched last spring in response to COVID-19. In y/y terms, opex added just 2% in 4Q20.
The conference call will probably be marked by optimistic comments from CEO Herman Gref on SBER's current performance, providing support to the stock even if management’s FY21 guidance is not formally improved.
This should be complemented by SBER’s release of likely decent 2M21 standalone RAS results tomorrow, 5 March. There is a
100 RUSSIA Country Report April 2021 www.intellinews.com