Dubai Islamic Bank Posts 33.5% Profit Increase

Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB), the largest sharia-compliant lender in the emirate, said on Monday its third-quarter net profit jumped 52 per cent, boosted by lower provisioning and core business growth.

The bank made Dhs461.4 million ($125.6 million) in the three months to September 30, it said in response to a question from Reuters, up from 303.6 million in the corresponding period last year.

This comfortably beat forecasts from three analysts polled by Reuters, who on average expected a net profit of Dhs416 million dirhams.

DIB’s profit for the first nine months of the year increased 33.5 per cent to Dhs1.2 billion, the bank said in an earlier statement.

The bank, like other lenders in the emirate, has benefited from a recovery in Dubai’s economy, with GDP growth of 4.9 per cent in the first six months of 2013 thanks to a strong expansion of trade and tourism.

In a rare interview, officials at the bank said in May they expected net profit growth in the high double-digits in 2013 after dealing with most of the bad loans which soared after the collapse of the local real estate market at the end of the last decade.

Impairments over the first nine months of the year fell 18.6 per cent over the same period of 2012 to Dhs751 million, the statement said.

Customer deposits stood at Dhs79.6 billion at the end of September, up 19.3 per cent from the end of 2012, and total assets were nine per cent higher at 107.4 billion.

Loans and advances increased 1.4 per cent between the end of 2012 and September 30 to Dhs59.7 billion.