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Nuria Triguero
Malaga
Friday, 7 February 2025, 17:24
Spain's Grupo Cooperativo Cajamar banking group achieved the best result in its history in 2024: its net profit reached 326 million euros, some 157% more than in 2023. The Andalucía-based bank has raised its profitability (ROE) to 7.8%, 4.5 percentage points higher than the previous year. According to the institution, these "historic" results are based on the "positive evolution of the banking business's own income". "The momentum and recurrence of financial activity has favoured double-digit growth in all margins of the income statement, helping to improve profitability and efficiency, while maintaining its solid level of solvency," said Cajamar who pointed out that companies such as S&P, Fitch and DBRS Morningstar have upgraded the rating of Grupo Cajamar to investment grade.
Net interest income continued its upward trend with growth of 14.3% year-on-year, to more than 1 billion euros, which, together with the results from joint ventures, which increased by 16.7%, pushed gross income up 16.6% to 1.5 billion euros. Joint ventures form the results of entities valued by the equity method plus fees from insurance and pension plans, consumer finance and mutual funds.
Net operating income was 20.7% higher, at 819 million euros, generating an increase in operating income of 14.7% and an improvement of 1.8 percentage points in the efficiency ratio to 47.2%. But the big difference was the lower impact of asset impairment, which in 2023 amounted to almost 410 million euros and in 2024 remained under 197 million.
In terms of business performance, the bank highlighted "the good performance of managed retail funds and the year-on-year growth in credit investment", which raised the total managed business volume to 104,121 million, 5.8% more than in 2023.
Lending reached a total of almost 38.6 billion euros, a growth of 4.3% since 2023, with an outstanding 9.2% growth in loans to companies. The consolidated loan portfolio remains diversified and new financing of 17.4 billion euros was granted, of which 42.5% was allocated to the agri-food sector, 33% to large companies and 24.5% to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and micro-SMEs. This distribution shows that the agri-food sector continues to be considered strategic for Grupo Cajamar. The bank's continued support has made it leader in market share for the primary sector in Spain, with 15.2%.
Cajamar has stated that it continues to be "among the significant Spanish institutions with the lowest non-performing loan (NPL) ratio", at 1.93%, a figure well below the sector average, while maintaining the upward trend in the NPL coverage ratio, reaching 72.1%.
The Andalusian bank's managed retail funds amounted to 57.9 billion euros, up 10.8%, sustained by an increase of 8.5% in on-balance sheet retail funds and 22.3% in off-balance sheet funds, mainly due to the dynamic marketing of mutual funds, which rose 33.7%, well above the sector average of 14.7%. As a result of this positive performance, the market share of deposits rose to 2.84%, 0.14 percentage points more than in the same quarter in 2023.
Grupo Cooperativo Cajamar closed 2024 with 5,062 employees, who serve more than 3.8 million customers through 976 branches and rural counters, including eight mobile branches that provide financial services to 54 villages with between 170 and 1,500 inhabitants. The bank has also highlighted the growth of its digital channels.
The 6.7% year-on-year increase in Cajamar's eligible capital raised its phased-in solvency ratio to 16.1%, as well as the phased-in CET 1 ratio to 13.9%. These figures enable Grupo Cajamar to maintain comfortable buffers over the regulatory solvency requirements, with an excess of 805 million euros. The MREL ratio increased by 1.5 percentage points, to 24.52%, exceeding the final requirement of 23.08% set for 1 January 2025.
The growth of managed retail funds and access to wholesale markets, with issues of senior debt and covered bonds totalling 1.1 billion euros in 2024, enable dGrupo Cajamar to maintain a comfortable liquidity position. It has a liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) of 218.1%, a net stable funding ratio (NSFR) of 152.5% and a loan-to-deposit (LTD) ratio of 79.6%. Additionally, it has the capacity to issue new covered bonds for an amount of almost 3.7 billion euros.
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