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Zenith Bank Plc, Nigeria’s biggest lender by market capitalisation, has reported a 162% jump in first-half (H1) profit after the country’s currency devaluation boosted income.
Zenith booked N355.6 billion ($471.6 million) of foreign-exchange gains in the six months through June, when profit jumped to N291.6 billion from N111.3 billion, it said in a regulatory filing.
The gains resulted from the “revaluation of foreign currency-denominated assets and liabilities held in the non-trading books,” it said.
Nigeria allowed its currency to weaken 40% against the dollar in June in reforms aimed at attracting overseas inflows to help revive the struggling economy.
While the move boosted the income of banks holding overseas assets, manufacturers with foreign-currency loans have reported losses arising from converting a weak naira to make dollar interest payments.
Zenith will pay an interim dividend of 0.50k per share on September 29th, with the cut-off date for names on the registrar records being September 22nd.