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FirstRand said normalised earnings per share, which exclude
certain one-time items, totalled 179.4 cents in the year to end-June, compared
with a restated 146.9c in the same period a year earlier.
The bank considers normalised earnings as the best measure
of its profit.
FirstRand said it would pay a special dividend of 70c,
following the sale of its insurance units.
FirstRand in May completed its R3.75bn sale of a 45% stake
in insurer OUTsurance to RMI Holdings . It previously spun off stake in insurer
Momentum, which became part of MMI Holdings Limited [JSE:MMI].
Net interest income, the measure of a bank's earnings from
lending, came in at R17.37bn, from R16.35bn a year earlier.
South Africa's banking industry - dominated by FirstRand and rivals Standard Bank Group [JSE:SBK], Absa Group [JSE:ASA] and Nedbank Group [JSE:NED] - is slowly recovering from a recession that caused massive job losses and sparked a surge in bad loans.
FirstRand has been outpacing rivals in managing impairments,
or bad debts, an area that has been one of chronic weakness for South Africa's
"big four" commercial banks.
"We were comfortable with the improvement of the
impairments, it was stronger than the other big four banks ... the quality of
loan book continues to improve," said Faizal Moolla, an analyst at Avior
Research in Cape Town.
"They are actively managing the loan book, making sure they collect all outstanding amounts and having sufficient security in place."
Shares of FirstRand are up about 5% so far this year, making them the second-best performer among South Africa's top 4 banks. Shares of smaller rival Nedbank are up 5.4%.
FirstRand shares gained as much as 5.24% to R21.10 on Tuesday morning. By 07:13 GMT, the stock was 3.49% higher at R20.75, outpacing a 1% rise in the JSE Top 40 - (Tradeable) [JSE:J200] blue-chip index .
