EARNINGS WATCH- CIB posts record full-year earnings. Our friends at Egypt’s largest private-sector bank delivered a 25% rise in net income to EGP 7.5 bn in FY2017 on revenues of EGP 14.9 bn (up 32% y-o-y). In comment on the results, management noted that the bank delivered “strong growth across its different revenue lines … and improved efficiency, as evident in a decrease in its cost-to-income ratio” despite sharp pressure from inflation. Net interest income rose “despite intense market competition, which pushed all banks to raise their cost of deposits in order to compete efficiently with the rates offered by public sector banks,” it added. CIB, which took home Euromoney’s nod as world’s best bank in the emerging markets in 2017, saw funding to businesses and individuals grow 5% during the year, while deposits were up 8%. The bank had a 7.2% share of the nation’s loan market as of September 2017, the most recent period for which market data is available.

What’s the outlook? CIB notes that “the road ahead remains challenging, especially after the CBE’s latest decision to increase the Required Reserve Ratio back to its historical 14%, which is expected to impact Banks’ interest margins in the short run, after which pressure would start to ease off as Banks gradually adjust their cost of deposits, thereby placing downward pressure on interest rates and helping bring inflation down.” You can read the bank’s full earnings filing here (pdf).

Leading dairy products maker Juhayna Food Industries reported a 269% y-o-y net profit increase in FY2017, according to a company earnings release (pdf). Consolidated net revenues for the year grew 21% over the same period last year. Top contributors to revenue growth for the year were the dairy and yogurt segments, representing 48% and 22% of revenues, respectively. This comes despite a challenging market environment for consumer goods in 2017 on the back of high inflation which peaked in July at 35%. Juhayna says it focused last year on “freezing CAPEX, closure of uneconomical distribution centers, delisting non-profitable SKUs, localization of input materials, cutting down the workforce, divesting from unproductive assets, focusing on reducing the inventory level to the minimum and shrinking debts.”

Sign of a recovery in the consumer food market: Juhayna’s results come days after cheese maker Domty, which also had a rough first nine months of the year, said its unaudited results suggested it would flip to a profit in 4Q2017 from a loss in the same quarter last year.

Gold miner Centamin reported a 13% y-o-y drop in core profit in 2017, which came in at USD 326 mn, according to a company statement (pdf). The Sukari gold mine produced 544,658 ounces of gold over the year at a cost of USD 554/oz, generating USD 676 mn in revenue and USD 224 mn in pre-tax profit.