The country’s second largest bank by advances, Barclays Bank Botswana, recouped some of its recent losses after surging by a huge 16 thebe to trade at a new price of 402 thebe by close of business at the local capital market on Thursday.
Barclays which has been struggling since last year saw its market value at the stock exchange going down by close to 30 percent.
The decline came as a result of the Bank’s full year financial results which reflected a decline in Profit Before Tax of 34 percent.
Finance Director Lipalesa Makepe said during the release of the results that the poor performance can also be attributed to two things; firstly, the structural nature of the bank’s retail portfolio, with asset growth supported by lower yielding secured lending relative to the unsecured portfolio and secondly, the impact of lower rates on the unsecured consumer lending portfolio.
The Bank believes its recent unimpressive financial results are a reflection of the challenging year in which the bank embarked on the journey to transform and rebuild its business.
On a positive note, non-interest income grew by 5.6 percent to P370 million on the back of improved treasury performance and higher transactional activity within the retail bank
Meanwhile data from the Botswana stock exchange show that local equities were subdued, a trend which financial analysts attribute to the last days of the reporting season of listed companies.
By late Thursday, bourse figures from the BSE indicated that there was little activity as investors prepared themselves for the Easter holidays. BSE data shows that for the week under review, 16 counters exchanged 1.24 million shares worth of P8.71mn while 7 counters were mute.
Another bank, Stanchart plunged by 25thebe from its 12 month high, trading at 1175thebe after a brief rally while FNBB slid by 2thebe to trade at 370thebe.
The data further indicate that most of the local bourse giants continued to dominate the volumes with micro financer, Letshego trading about 36.7 percent while leading retailer Choppies and Sechaba came in at 23.4 percent and 16.1 percent respectively.
