Monday, October 21, 2013

Measuring and Evaluating the Performance of Banks



Measuring and Evaluating the Performance of Banks

Performance:
Performance refers to how adequately a bank or other financial firm meets the objectives of its stockholders, employees, depositors and other creditors, borrowers and all stakeholders.
Measuring the Value of a Firm:
Banks are simply businesses organized to maximize the value of the shareholders’ wealth invested in the firm at an acceptable level of risk.

                                                  Dividend expected to be paid in future periods            E (Dt)               
Value of the Bank’s Stock (Po) =                                                                                                                                               =      
                                                  Minimum acceptable rate of return tied to bank’s            (1+r)t
perceived level of risk

(r = risk free rate of interest + equity risk premium)

·         Risk free rate of interest = current yield on government bond
·         Equity risk premium = to compensate an investor for accepting the risk of investment in a bank rather than in risk free securities

Factors affecting the value of Stock:

From the above-mentioned equation, we can identify the factors that may lead to raise the value of a bank’s stock:
1.      The value of the stream of future dividend is expected to increase, E (Dt) 
2.      If the bank’s perceived level of risk falls (lower rate of ‘r’ by lowering equity risk premium)
3.      Market interest rate decrease (lower rate of ‘r’ by lowering risk free rate of interest)
4.      Expected dividend increases are combined with declining risk perceived by the investors

Research evidence has found that the stock value of banks is specially sensitive to market interest rate, currency exchange rate, and the strength and weakness of the economy that it serves. Management can work to adopt policies that increase future earnings, reduce risks, or pursue a combination of both in order to raise company’s stock price.

Profitability Ratios: Proxy/Surrogates for Stock Values

Theoretically, the best indicator of a firm’s performance is its stock price. This indicator often fails to truly reflect the firm itself because of inefficiency of markets where the stocks traded over. This fact forces analysts to fall back on surrogates for market value indicators in the form of various profitability ratios.    

·         Return on Assets (ROA): ROA is is primarily a ‘managerial efficiency’ indicator. It indicates how capably the management of the bank has been converting the assets of the firm into net earnings.   

Net income after tax
ROA =
                                                    Total assets


·         Return on Equity (ROE): ROE is a measure of the rate of return flowing to the bank’s shareholders.
Net income after tax
ROE =
                                                    Total equity

                                               
·         Net Interest Margin (NIM): NIM is an efficiency as well as profitability-measuring ratio that measures how large a spread between interest revenues and interest costs management has been able to achieve by close control over earning assets and the pursuit (search/hunt/quest) of the cheapest sources of funding.    


(Interest income from loan   _     (Interest expense on deposits
and security investment)             and on other debt issued)
                          NIM =
                           Total earning assets

·         Net Noninterest Margin: This ratio measures the amount of noninterest revenues relative to noninterest cost incurred. Noninterest revenues are mainly various service charges and income. Noninterest costs include salaries and wages, loan loss expenses, repair and maintenance costs etc.


Noninterest revenues – Noninterest expenses
                                              NIM =
Total earning assets



·         Net Operating Margin:

      Total operating revenues – Total operating expenses
                                           NOM =
Total assets

·         Earnings per share of stock (EPS):  

      Net Income after Tax
                                           EPS =
Total common equity shares


·         Earnings Spread: ES measures the effectiveness of a bank’s intermediation function in borrowing and lending money and the intensity of competition in the market of the firm.

Total interest income               Total interest expense
                                           EPS =
Total earning assets                 Total interest bearing
                                                          liabilities

Relation between ROE and ROA: The Tradeoff between Risk & Return

Even with a poor ROA a financial institution can achieve a relatively high ROE through heavy use of debt and minimal use of owner’s capital. This relationship can be explained with the analysis of ROE & ROA blending.
Both ROE and ROA has the same numerator: net income. These two profit indicators can be linked directly as,
Total assets
ROE = ROA ×
Total equity

If we elaborately split them,

Net income after tax    Net income after tax                 Total assets
      Total equity           =        Total assets             ×        Total equity


Total revenues – Total operating expenses – taxes                Total assets
        ROE =                                     Total assets                                            ×      Total equity




The above two equations says that ROE or shareholders’ return is highly sensitive to how its assets are financed. If the leverage is greater, ROE tends to be greater. That means with a poor ROA, a financial institution can achieve a relatively high ROE through heavy use of debt and minimal use of owner’s capital.

If a bank’s projected ROA is 1% for this year will need BDT 10 in assets for each BDT 1 capital to achieve a 10% ROE. If ROA is expected to fall 0.5%, a 10% ROE is achievable only if BDT 1 capital supports BDT 20 in assets.

It also clear from the equations that if ROA is expected to decline, a firm must take more risk in the form of higher leverage to achieve desired ROE.


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