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HSBC’s pre-tax profits fell 80% year-on-year in the final three months of 2023 due to a $3 billion charge on the value of its stake in the Bank of China Communications, the institute said on Wednesday of credit.
Fourth-quarter profits fell to $1 billion from $5 billion a year earlier, the lender said. Its full-year pretax profits rose 78% to $30 billion as higher interest rates supported the lender, but missed analysts’ expectations of $34 billion.
HSBC said BoCom’s write-down was “in line with recent market-wide developments in mainland China”, but that BoCom “remains a strong partner”. The UK-based lender, which holds a 19% stake in the Chinese bank, said its “positive views on medium- and long-term structural growth opportunities in mainland China remain unchanged.”
Hong Kong-listed shares of HSBC fell as much as 3.8% on Wednesday after the earnings release.
The findings underline how banks are taking a hit on their exposure to China as growth slows in the world’s second-largest economy. In October, HSBC rival Standard Chartered took a $700 million writedown on its investment in China Bohai Bank, a mainland Chinese lender.
HSBC made provisions of $3.4 billion to cover expected credit losses for the full year and said $1 billion was due to its exposure to commercial properties in mainland China, where the sector is struggling.
The bank said chief executive Noel Quinn’s total pay package jumped from £5.6 million to £10.6 million due to payments from a long-term incentive plan.
The size of the payment reflected Quinn’s “leadership in reshaping the [bank] to deliver more sustainable returns to shareholders,” HSBC said, although it noted that this took Quinn’s pay to 169 times that of the average HSBC employee in the UK, up from 95 times last year. The bank’s total bonus pool increased 12% to $3.8 billion.
Rival Barclays cut the bonus pool and pay package of its chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan on Tuesday, after a difficult year for its investment bank. By contrast, Wall Street banks Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley have all announced pay raises for their CEOs.
HSBC announced an additional share buyback worth up to $2 billion and a dividend of 31 cents per share for the quarter. Quinn said the payments to shareholders reflect “four years of hard work and the strength of our balance sheet in a higher interest rate environment.”
He added: “The outlook currently remains uncertain, however, and many of our customers remain concerned about their finances.”
The bank’s net interest margin, a crucial measure of loan profitability, rose to 1.66% for the full year as the bank benefited from higher interest rates. HSBC is one of the largest deposit-taking institutions in the world, making it particularly sensitive to interest rates.
The bank said it expects net interest income of at least $41 billion for 2024, up from $36 billion in 2023.
Its return on tangible capital, a measure of profitability, was 14.6% for the year, up from 10% a year earlier but missing analysts’ estimates of 17%.
Additional reporting by Hudson Lockett in Hong Kong