Nedbank reports exceptional results

Nedbank’s 2022 full-year results revealed a significant increase in the company’s headline earnings, which allowed it to increase its total dividend for 2022 by 38%.

The company declared a final dividend of 866 cents per share, a 14% increase from December 2021. This brought the total dividend for 2022 to 1,649 cents per share – a record-high for Nedbank.

Despite a “challenging macroeconomic backdrop”, the company managed to increase its headline earnings to R14 billion, said Nedbank CEO Mike Brown. 

Unlike many other companies in South Africa, Nedbank reported that load-shedding had had a limited impact on its operations, though it did increase the company’s expenses.

Generator run-time in the company’s operations increased by more than 200%, and diesel-related expenses increased by more than 100%. 

Power cuts did not affect Nedbank’s ATMs, branches or point-of-sale devices due to “backup power solutions”. The company’s call centre and digital channels did, however, see an increase in utilisation.

Nedbank also announced a R5 billion capital optimisation initiative, which will take the form of a share repurchase programme and an odd-lot offer. This initiative was approved by the company’s board and will be executed over 12 months.

In its results, Nedbank also provided an update on its digital banking platform, which it said has reached 91% completion of the IT build.

The company said this enables continued double-digit growth in digital metrics, client satisfaction scores at the top-end of the South African banking peer group, and market share gains in household deposits.

Nedbank’s digital initiatives also aided the company in increasing its client base in 2022.

“Our digital initiatives helped us to increase the number of digitally active retail clients in SA by 13% to 2,6 million. This now represents 68% of retail main-banked clients,” said Brown.

The Nedbank Money app also saw a rise in popularity, reaching the two million active clients milestone. The app saw a 34% increase in transaction volumes – up 253% since 2019.