Rejean Robitaille, president and CEO of Laurentian BankIAN BARRETT
Laurentian Bank boosted its dividend for the second consecutive year after reporting record profit in 2010 and expressing confidence about the coming year.
Canada's seventh-largest bank increased its quarterly dividend by 8.3 per cent, or 3 cents per share, to 39 cents.
Last year, it was the only Canadian bank to increase its payout, when it raised the dividend by two cents. But in the past week two other Canadian banks, National and Canadian Western, also announced dividend hikes.
Montreal-based Laurentian reported profit of $32.5-million, or $1.24 per share, for the period ended Oct. 31. That compared with $38.2-million or $1.47 per share a year ago.
Excluding discontinued operations, those profits were up 21 per cent compared with $26.8-million and EPS of 99 cents in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Revenues increased 6.4 per cent to $190.1-million.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters forecast fourth-quarter profits would be $1.15 per share on $187-million in revenue.
For the fiscal year, Laurentian Bank earned a record $122.9-million, up 9 per cent from $113.3-million in 2009, as revenue grew 11 per cent to $737.4-million.
Diluted earnings per share were $4.63 compared with $4.23 last year, or $4.23 versus $3.75 per share excluding discontinued operations.
Laurentian said the increase in continuing operations earnings over last year reflected strong growth in mortgage and commercial loans, as well as a solid contribution from each business segment.
For the full year, the bank had expected $4.56 EPS on $735-million in revenue.
Founded more than 160 years ago, Laurentian Bank is the third-largest financial institution in Quebec after the Desjardins Group and the National Bank of Canada.
Its 3,500 employees operate some 157 branches, 32 commercial banking centres and 15 brokerage offices.