Secure Trust Bank PLC Preliminary Results for the 12 months to 31 December 2023

Strong progress towards £4 billion loan book

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Secure Trust Bank PLC (‘STB’ or the ‘Group’), a leading specialist lender, is pleased to announce its financial results for the 12 months to 31 December 2023. STB continued to build momentum, delivered solid income growth, managed costs effectively and delivered a significant increase of 12.4% in adjusted profit before tax pre impairments in line with expectations. The Group has made good progress on its Optimising for Growth strategic priorities to drive sustainable and attractive RoAE.

Highlights¹

• Record new lending delivered 13.6% growth in lending balances to £3.3 billion (2022: £2.9 billion)
• Total profit before tax of £33.4 million decreased by 24.1% (2022: £44.0 million)
• Adjusted³ profit before tax pre impairments up 12.4% to £85.5 million (2022: £76.1 million)
• Adjusted³ profit before tax of £42.6 million up 9.2% (2022: £39.0 million)
• Adjusted³ cost income ratio at 54.0% (2022: 55.0%); on track to deliver £5 million in annualised savings² by the end of 2024. Statutory cost income ratio at 57.5% (2022: 55.0%)
• Cost of risk stable at 1.4% (2022: 1.4%)
• Tangible book value per share increased 4.0% to £17.80 per share

David McCreadie, Chief Executive, said:

"Secure Trust has made significant progress in 2023 against our strategic priorities. We delivered strong lending growth of 13.6% by enhancing our customer experience and leveraging our distribution networks. We continued to manage our growth carefully to generate an appropriate risk adjusted margin. All four specialist lending businesses delivered record levels of new business lending in 2023.

Our strategy to simplify the Group continues at pace, with further cost optimisation savings delivered during the year. We are on track to deliver our upgraded target of £5 million of annualised savings2 by the end of 2024.

Once again, we have demonstrated our ability to grow in 2023 and the Group is well placed to realise our ambitions. We are well on our way towards our £4 billion net loan book target and delivery of our 14-16% return on average equity target. We remain confident about the future.”

Footnotes:

1. Performance metrics relate to continuing operations, unless otherwise stated. Further details of the metrics can be found in the Appendix to the 2023 Annual Report and Accounts.
2. Cost savings relative to operating expenses for the 12 months ended December 2021.
3. Adjusted metrics exclude exceptional items of £6.5 million (2022: £nil). Details can be found in Note 8 to the financial statements.

The full version of this announcement together with the associated investors’ presentation are available on: www.securetrustbank.com/results-reports/results-reports-presentations.