By Jesús Aguado
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's BBVA (BME:BBVA) expects to pay a significantly higher dividend for 2023 than the 0.43 euros per share paid out in 2022 as higher lending boosts profits, Chairman Carlos Torres said in a post on the Spanish bank's website on Monday.
"With a growing profit, a declining number of shares and a constant dividend policy - with distributions between 40 to 50 percent of profit - we see how the dividend per share is clearly growing year after year," he said.
"We expect the dividend we pay our shareholders for the year 2023 to be higher per share than it was (in 2022)," he added.
In October, the bank paid an interim dividend of 0.16 euros against its 2023 results, a 33.3% increase over the interim dividend paid in October 2022.
The bank's dividend policy comprises of two cash payments - one interim and one final - which are complemented with a share buyback program.
The bank finished its latest 1 billion-euro ($1.10 billion) share-buy back programme at the end of November 2023.
The interim dividend was backed by 3.88 billion euros in net profit in the first half of 2023 on higher lending income in Mexico, its main market, and Spain.
Spanish banks have been benefiting from higher financial margins that will help them book record profits for the whole of 2023. Spanish lenders are mostly retail focused, which means they tend to benefit more from higher interest rates than some other banks in the euro zone.
Analysts expect BBVA's 2023 net profit to rise to 7.84 billion euros, according to data from Refinitiv.
In 2022, Spain's second-biggest lender by market value reported a net profit of 6.42 billion euros.
For 2024, Torres expected growth in BBVA's banking activities to continue after adding 11 million new customers over the past 12 months.
"This has also led us to increase lending, which was growing at a rate of 8% in September," he said.
At 0926 GMT, shares in BBVA were down 0.2% after gaining 46% in 2023.
($1 = 0.9123 euros)