Unicaja closed the fiscal year 2022 with a profit of 260 million, a 89% more than in the same period of the previous year, thanks to the recovery of margins in typical banking business.
These are actually preliminary results comparing the combined performance of Unicaja and Liberbank for all comparison dates and does not consider special adjustments for the completed merger in July 2021.
This sense influenced the rapid rise in interest rates, which began to be reflected in the income statement from from the second half of the year.
Consequently, the interest margin increased by 2.9% to 1,058 million euros, the growth rate in the last quarter was 11.5%.
Net commissions increase by 7.3% to 525 million, the total gross profit increased by 4.5%.
This represents significant growth, since the bank, which concentrates all its activities in Spain, was burdened at the beginning of the year by an environment of still low interest rates.
Despite this, the action 9,48% fell During the trading session, the market is penalizing fourth quarter data well below the analyst consensus, with a endowment of 50 million euros due to the possible deterioration of the economy derived from the high inflation scenario.
In this sense, analysts expected a quarterly profit 30-40 million euros, but ultimately the bank recorded a loss of 1 million dollars for the aforementioned provisions.
In any case, positive business indicator, in terms of commercial activities.
Investment loans to individuals increased by 1.8 percent to 34,491 million euros, while mortgage loans They increased by 1.7 percent to 31,617 million euros.
In 2022, Unicaja issued 10,049 million of loans, of which 4,313 million were private mortgages, reaching the 8% of the production of new mortgages.
For their part, customer deposits amount to 90,081 million euros, increasing a 0.3% in the fourth quarter.
Additionally, synergies from layoffs and planned store openings after the merger resulted in a 8.2% cost reduction despite of high inflation environment.
At the end of 2021, the group agreed to an ERE which provided for the departure of 1,500 employees.
The ratio of efficiency stood at 54.4%, with an improvement of 7.4 percentage points with respect to to the previous year, although it is still is above 50%.
Therefore, experts consider that a bank begins to be efficient now that it has to spend less to generate ROTE profitability. ends the year in 4% and despite an improvement of 1.7 points compared to the previous year.
These are low values that do not include the cost of capital located around 10%.
The entity ended the semester with a capital ratio CET 1 fully loaded from 13%, 0.46 pp higher than the previous year and excess capital over requirements regulatory requirements of 1,622 million.