Hana Financial Group posted a consolidated net profit of 2.4029 trillion won in the first half, marking the largest first-half net profit on record. It also announced Value-up 2.0, a plan to enhance corporate value, saying it will additionally buy back and cancel its own shares worth 250 billion won in the third quarter.
Hana Financial disclosed on the 24th that first-half net profit on a consolidation basis came to 2.4029 trillion won. That surpassed the 2.301 trillion won recorded in the first half of last year, the largest first-half net profit on record. Second-quarter net profit was 1.1928 trillion won, the second-highest quarterly net profit since the 2012 merger of Hana and Korea Exchange Bank, following the first quarter.
First-half core profit was 6.2956 trillion won, the sum of interest income of 4.8082 trillion won and fee income of 1.4874 trillion won, up 13.0% from a year earlier. In particular, fee income rose 37.7% on the back of growth in securities brokerage fees and the investment banking (IB) institutional sector.
Provisions related to corporate rehabilitation, including JoongAng Group, were set at 74.9 billion won. Hana Financial is known to have exposure of about 360 billion won to JoongAng Group, centered on the bank and capital units. It also reflected reduced insurance profit and loss due to the advancement of insurance actuarial assumptions (52.4 billion won) and foreign exchange translation losses due to the rise in exchange rates (109.8 billion won).
Among major affiliates, Hana Bank posted first-half net profit of 2.1211 trillion won, up 1.7% from a year earlier. Hana Securities saw net profit soar 155.7% to 273.1 billion won, helped by expanded brokerage fees from increased transaction value and the effects of risk management.
On the day, Hana Financial announced Value-up 2.0. It set targets of a return on equity (ROE) of 12%, a shareholder return ratio of at least 50%, and a common equity tier 1 (CET1) ratio of at least 13%. Under the Value-up 1.0 plan announced in 2024, it had presented targets of at least 10%, a phased move to 50% by 2027, and management of the CET1 range at 13.0%–13.5%.
To achieve Value-up 2.0, Hana Financial's board resolved that in the third quarter it will additionally buy back and cancel its own shares worth 250 billion won. Earlier, Hana Financial carried out a first-half buyback and cancellation of its own shares worth 400 billion won.
It also plans to increase the total annual dividends by at least 10% each year until meeting the high-dividend corporations threshold of a 40% payout ratio. Hana Financial will pay 1,155 won per share in second-quarter cash dividends, up from 1,145 won in the first quarter. In the first and second quarters of last year, it paid 906 won and 913 won in cash dividends, respectively. At the end of the first half, the group's ROE was 10.62%, the CET1 ratio was 13.21%, the BIS total capital ratio was 15.26%, and the credit cost ratio was 0.29%.