Saudi National Bank has announced to start offering additional sukuk from August 28 to strengthen its capital base.
According to Arab News, the Saudi National Bank said in a stock exchange filing that the size and offer price of the Saudi Riyal-denominated issuance are still undetermined and subject to market conditions.
The expected closing date of the offer is December 31, 2022. Investors will have to subscribe a minimum of one million Riyals for which the rate of return is yet to be determined.
The announcement by the bank comes after it reported strong earnings for the first half of 2022, with profits up 59 percent to nine million riyals.
This is against a 5.7 billion riyal profit reported by the Saudi-listed bank in the same period last year.
The bank's profit surged as total operating profit rose 24 percent to 16.4 billion riyals from 13.3 billion riyals in the same period a year earlier.
The Saudi National Bank also attributed the figure to a 12.5 percent drop in expenses, mainly due to lower impairment charges for credit losses.
With strong financial performance, the bank announced a half-yearly dividend payment of 4.48 billion riyals, representing 1.1 riyals per share.
Shares of Saudi National Bank have risen nearly 11 percent year-to-date after the sukuk announcement, reaching 70.6 riyals in early trading on Sunday.
The big lender currently has a market capitalization of about 316 billion riyals.
The Saudi National Bank completed the issuance of $750 million worth of sukuk to eligible investors through private placement in January this year.
An analysis by Bloomberg revealed that the kingdom's domestic market recorded sales of $14.4 billion worth of sukuk this year, up 185 percent from last year.
This amount represents more than half of global domestic sukuk sales, with the Saudi government alone selling more than 60 percent of it.
