KakaoBank Q1 NP more than doubles on year on jump in fee revenue

South Korea’s biggest online-only bank KakaoBank Corp.’s reported its best quarterly results ever in the first quarter thanks to a surge in non-interest revenue like transfer fees.

KakaoBank announced in a regulatory filing on Monday that it earned 54 billion won ($47.66 million) in operating profit during the first quarter, up 193 percent from a year prior. Its net interest income expanded to 129.6 billion won, versus 84.4 billion won in the comparable period a year ago.

The company’s net profit jumped 152 percent on year to 46.7 billion won due to improved revenue from the non-interest sector. The profit from transaction fees swung from a loss of 3.1 billion won a year ago to 13.2 billion won.

Profit growth was also driven by an increase in the number of users, which reached 16.15 million adding 700,000 on quarter.

Korea’s No. 1 online-only bank’s total assets came to 28.61 trillion won as of late March while its BIS adequacy ratio slightly dipped from 20.03 percent at the end of last year to 19.85 percent.

Its deposit balance reached 25.39 trillion won, gaining 1.85 trillion won on quarter. The loan balance added 1.29 trillion won against a quarter to 21.6 trillion won as it expanded its loan services for housing rental deposit and to low-and mid-credit borrowers.

Loan delinquency rate came to 0.21 percent, versus 0.22 percent three months ago.

KakaoBank applied for a preliminary review of an initial public offering on April 16 and is expected to debut as early as July. Only two online-only banks currently operate in Korea, while Toss Bank is waiting to obtain a license to operate the country’s third digital only bank in mid-2021.

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