HONG KONG (Reuters) -HSBC Holdings raised its financial target on Tuesday as its first-half profit surged more than two fold, supported by rising interest rates around the world and the positive effects of its planned French unit sale.
The London-headquartered bank also announced the second of a new cycle of buybacks of up to $2 billion, which starts immediately. Europe’s largest bank with a market value of $162 billion posted a pretax profit of $21.7 billion for the first six months this year, versus $9.2 billion a year earlier. The results were better than the $20.9 billion mean average estimate of brokers compiled by HSBC.
HSBC raised its near-term return on tangible equity goal, a key performance target, to at least mid-teens for 2023 and 2024, from a previous target of at least 12% from 2023 onwards. It reported return on tangible equity of 9.9% for 2022.
The bank said it would pay an interim dividend of 10 cents per share.
