Woori announces 'value-up' plan, Q2 earnings above expectations

Woori Financial Group announced its "value-up" plan to improve its shareholder return ratio to 50 percent in the long term, along with a 49 percent spike in second quarter earnings.

Woori Financial Group office in central Seoul [YONHAP]

Woori Financial Group announced its "value-up" plan to achieve a shareholder return ratio of 50 percent in the long term, along with its expectation-beating second-quarter earnings on Thursday.

The announcement makes Woori the first commercial bank to release a detailed plan for the Korea Value-up Index intended to resolve the chronic undervaluation of domestic stocks.

The financial holding firm's net profit came to 931.4 billion won ($673 million) in the April-June period, up 49 percent from the same time frame last year, it said in a regulatory filing Thursday. The figure exceeded the analyst forecast of 803.4 billion won compiled by the market tracker FnGuide.

Its operating profit rose 10.5 percent on year to 2.73 trillion won.

The financial group said its interest income came to 2.19 trillion won in the three months up to June 30, up 0.1 percent from a year earlier, while its noninterest income spiked 91.7 percent to 535 billion won over the cited period.

The group attributed the sharp increase in noninterest income to the "successful expansion of its corporate and investment banking business," as well as a rise in returns on stock investment due to a drop in interest rates.

Woori Bank's net interest margin, the difference between interest received and paid, reached 1.47 percent in the second quarter, down from 1.59 percent a year earlier.

In the first half of the year, Woori Financial posted net profit of 1.75 trillion won, an improvement over the 1.54 trillion won logged in the same period last year.

Its operating income came to 5.28 trillion won in the January-June period, up from 5.02 trillion won a year earlier.

In its latest value-up plan, Woori vowed to achieve a shareholder return ratio of over 50 percent in the long term, up from 33.8 percent last year, and a return on equity, or ROE, exceeding 10 percent, compared to the average of 9.1 percent during the past five years.

BY SHIN HA-NEE, YONHAP [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]