Metrobank Q3 profit: P12.1B (up 11% y/y)

Metrobank [MBT 75.50, down 4.1%; 148% avgVol] [link] posted a Q3 net income of P12.1 billion, up 11% y/y from its Q3/23 net income of P10.9 billion, and up 5% q/q from its Q2/24 net income of P11.6 billion. MBT’s net income over the first 9 months of the year was P35.7 billion, up 12.4% y/y and a new record for the Ty Family’s bank. Net interest income was up 11% to P85.7 billion. MBT noted 9M/24 gross loans were up 15.6%, with commercial loans up 16.6% and credit card receivables up 16.6%. Total deposits reached P2.3 trillion. 

MB bottom-line: The bank made P131 million in profit every single day of the quarter. Not revenue. Net income. The stock’s price is up 47% year-to-date, and while it’s not the best-performing bank stock of the universal banks (that honor belongs to Chinabank [CBC 58.00, down 0.8%; 59% avgVol], which is up 87% YTD), it’s kept pace with BPI [BPI 147.20, down 0.1%; 125% avgVol], outperformed BDO [BDO 157.00, down 1.9%; 93% avgVol], and stomped Union Bank [UBP 36.55, down 6.2%; 310% avgVol]. But even UBP, which is down 33% YTD, has made over P8 billion in 9M/24 profit. Our banks (and the families that own them) are literally swimming in Scrooge McDuck vaults of profit. Maybe I’m still just salty that our banking industry’s regulator, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), has not taken the outrageous profitability of our banking sector as an opportunity to eliminate fees for small-value transactions that disproportionately tax the financial transactions of the poor and of the “unbanked” sector that everyone is so desperate to claw into the system. 

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