Billion boom among analysts | Finansavisen

The CEO of SEB, Johan Torgeby, can smile when he meets the analyst corps today.

Because they have been more negative about the bank’s results for the first quarter than the facts show.

Turnover ended at SEK 20.68 billion compared to SEK 19.06 billion a year ago. That’s top-line growth of a strong 9 percent.

According to Bloomberg, the analysts themselves expected sales revenue of NOK 19.65 billion.

Solid profit

Even when the analysts were supposed to calculate the operating result, they grossly missed the mark. It ended at 12.3 billion Swedish kroner in the first quarter, while the consensus among analysts was 11.2 billion.

In other words, the disc boom went NOK 1.1 billion in SEB’s favour.

Compared to the same quarter last year, the bank’s operating profit increased from 11.6 billion or 6 percent.

The return on capital was 17.2 per cent, which is slightly down from the same quarter 12 months before. Then it was 17.9 percent.

After tax, the result was NOK 9.5 billion, which is an improvement of 1 percent from the same quarter last year, and a growth of 13 percent compared to the fourth quarter.

Minimal loan losses

But it is not only increased income and good cost control that make the result better than expected.

One reason for the strong result is that the bank’s loss on lending is low, and lower than previous quarters and expectations.

A scant 73 million Swedish kroner have been booked as losses on loans in the first quarter of this year, compared to 272 million in the comparable quarter last year.

Looking at the fourth quarter, the development is even better. SEB then booked NOK 664 million in losses on loans.

Over time, since 2007, SEB’s loan losses amount to only 0.13 per cent of all loan commitments. This includes the worst years of 2009 and 2016, when losses amounted to 0.92 and 0.26 per cent of loans respectively.

In the first quarter of this year, the figure is as low as 0.01 per cent.