LONDON (Alliance News) - Permanent TSB Group Holdings PLC on Wednesday reported a rise in interim profit as it increased its lending volumes and residential mortgage market share.
The personal and business bank posted a 33% in pretax profit in the six months ended June to EUR57 million from EUR43 million.
The Irish bank posted a 5.9% increase in total operating income to EUR234 million from EUR221 million but a 5% decrease in net interest income to EUR193 million from EUR204 million.
Permanent TSB said the profit increase was driven by the bank increasing its 'other' income by more than double to EUR41 million from EUR18 million.
This includes net fees and commissions on credit cards and insurance contracts and a portion of the sale of some of the bank's high quality liquid assets.
The bank also had a reduced exceptional items cost of EUR1 million from EUR10 million and a drop in impairment charges to zero from EUR6 million.
Total new lending volumes increased 50% to EUR585 million, in the first half of 2017 new lending increased EUR391 million.
The bank said its mortgage market share for increased to 13.8% from 12.6% in 2017. This is despite Permanent TSB's total residential mortgages decreasing 1.3% to EUR17.68 billion from EUR17.92 billion at the end of 2017.
Net interest margin decreased to 1.77% from 1.80% at the end of 2017.
Looking ahead, the bank remains "confident" it is "adequately" capitalised for profitable growth and to deliver on its non-performing loans reduction strategy.
The bank reduced its non-performing loans by EUR235 million to EUR5.05 billion in the period - mainly due to a targeted voluntary surrender programme.
Permanent TSB also sold EUR2.1 billion of non-performing loans in July, reducing its non-performing loans ratio to 16% and overall non-performing loans to EUR3.00 billion.
Chief Executive Jeremy Masding said: "In the first half of 2018, we continued to maintain strong momentum in new lending recording close to a 50% increase year-on-year. We have increased our market share in mortgage lending while maintaining pricing discipline and making process improvements to deliver a better customer experience. This has been achieved against the backdrop of an increasingly competitive market.
"We are very close to completing the rebuilding of the bank so that we can focus solely on competing in the retail and small and medium-sized enterprises markets. In summary, our goal is that by early 2019 we will have built a retail and small and medium-sized enterprises bank that is focused on delivering the right outcomes for its customers and quality earnings for its shareholders - the bank of choice."
Shares in Permanent TSB were down 3.0% at EUR2.04 each Wednesday midday.