StanChart sets $1.3 billion buyback after H1 profit beats handily

Audio By Carbonatix

Enlarge

By Selena Li and Lawrence White

HONG KONG/LONDON (Reuters) -Standard Chartered (StanChart) reported on Thursday its first-half pretax profit rose 26%, beating analysts’ estimates, as a strong performance in the wealth, markets and global banking businesses boosted revenue at the lender.

StanChart, which earns most of its revenue in Asia and Africa, said the reported pretax profit for the first six months of this year reached $4.38 billion. That compared with $3.49 billion a year earlier and the $3.83 billion average of 15 analyst estimates compiled by the bank.

The London-headquartered lender also announced a further $1.3 billion share buyback that it said would start imminently.

Despite the strong performance, StanChart kept its key performance targets largely unchanged, saying the global economy could suffer from the broader fallout of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade wars.

The emerging markets-focused bank slightly raised its guidance for income this year, saying it now expected growth to be at the bottom of a 5%-7% range rather than below it.

The lender also appeared to dodge the multi-billion dollar China-related write-downs which blighted rival HSBC’s results on Wednesday, with StanChart reporting an impairment charge for the first half of $336 million, mainly from its wealth and retail banking unit.

(Reporting by Selena Li in Hong Kong and Lawrence White in London; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)