Metro Bank (MTRO) is apparently keen to “evolve in line with best practice corporate governance guidelines”. Although the UK Corporate Governance Code does not say what time of day a listed company should publish its statutory results, it is odd that the lender is now in the habit of dropping its figures after UK markets close.
Metro’s figures for the six months to June arrived at 5.14pm London time (or midday for investor ‘FANS’ on the US east coast), and just 20 minutes after the challenger bank confirmed a hunt would soon begin to replace Vernon Hill as chairman.
Neither the timing nor the order calmed the eventual market reaction to an abrupt halt in revenues, an inversion of the loan-to-deposit ratio, and confirmation of the sale of a recently acquired £521m loan portfolio in a bid to shore up liquidity. Evidently, Metro was losing money in the second quarter of 2019.
All told, commercial customer withdrawals meant deposits fell from £15.7bn to £13.7bn in the period, although Metro said net inflows have now returned in the last eight weeks. There are scant signs that profitability has stabilised. The net interest margin dropped to 1.62 per cent in the first half of 2019, and will now be impacted by higher debt costs.
Consensus forecasts are for earnings per share of 19.8p in 2019, and 23.9p in 2020.
| METRO BANK (MTRO) | ||||
| ORD PRICE: | 400p | MARKET VALUE: | £ 690m | |
| TOUCH: | 399-400p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 3,512p | LOW: 380p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | NIL | PE RATIO: | 31 | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 1,025p | LEVERAGE: | 13.6 | |
| Half-year to 30 Jun | Total operating income (£m) | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
| 2018 | 190 | 20.8 | 17.1 | nil |
| 2019 | 221 | 3.4 | 1.0 | nil |
| % change | +16 | -84 | -94 | - |
| Ex-div: | n/a | |||
| Payment: | n/a |
