DVB Groups say net interest income and net fee and commission income for the first quarter of 2008 outperformed the levels achieved in the same quarter of the previous year. Profit from ordinary activities before tax amounted to €31.5 million for the first quarter of the current business year, down 7.6% from €34.1 million recorded in last year's corresponding quarter.

“The figure for the first quarter of the previous year was influenced by the sale of a fund investment,” said DVB in a statement.

Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors of DVB Bank AG, Wolfgang F. Driese commented first-quarter results: “We experienced a strong development in our Transport Finance business during the first three months. Typically, the focus during the first quarter is on preparing rather than closing transactions: this relationship tends to be reversed in the fourth quarter.

These are good signs for DVBs performance during the remainder of the current year, for which I do remain optimistic. Thanks to our business model, we are not directly affected by the financial markets crisis. The indirect impact in the form of higher refinancing costs is passed on in full when originating new business”.

Individual operating result items developed as follows: net interest income after loan losses totalled €49.6 million, up 25.3% on the previous years figure of €39.6 million. Net fee and commission income increased by 20.5%, to €13.5 million. Both operating result items reflect the strong growth of the Transport Finance business.

General administrative expenses only rose slightly, by 3.2% to €32.2 million. Staff expenses increased by 5.7 %, to €18.6 million. Over the past year, the bank has hired additional Transport Finance and Investment Management experts to boost its worldwide business activities.

DVB Bank AG reported total assets of €12.8 billion against €13.1 billion at 31 December 2007. “The 2.7% decrease was due to flows around the reporting date,” says DVB.

DVBs nominal customer lending totalled €13.85 billion down 3.6% from €14.37 billion reported at year-end 2007. The further appreciation of the euro versus the US dollar more than absorbed the underlying growth in US dollar customer lending.

DVB has applied the Advanced Approach under Basel II to calculate capital ratios since the beginning of 2008. This has provided significant relief in terms of risk-weighted assets to be included, increasing the core capital ratio to 11.9%, and the total capital ratio to 17.3%.

Based on the previous regulatory framework (Basel I), the core capital ratio remained stable, at 6.4% (unchanged from 31 December 2007), whilst the total capital ratio stood at 9.6% against 9.4% at 31 December 2007.

Return on equity before tax (RoE) and the cost/income ratio showed a significant effect resulting from the change in net income from financial instruments: return on equity for the first quarter of 2008 was 18.7% (down from 23.3% in last year’s corresponding quarter, whilst the cost/income ratio rose by 9.6 percentage points, to 57.3%.

 

Source: Commercial Aviation Online