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Palestine Commercial Bank earns a pretax income of $0.33 million in 1H 2011

2011-08-15

The Palestine Exchange (PEX) received a draft of reviewed interim condensed financial statements from Palestine Commercial Bank (PCB). The PEX disclosure rules in place give all of the PEX listed companies a period of 45 days to report their first half interim financial statements as reviewed by their independent external auditor. Their disclosure has been published on the PEX website (www.pex.ps) and emailed to PEX member securities firms in conjunction with this press release.

The disclosed draft financials were not approved by the Palestinian Monetary Authority (PMA) and there may be some material changes. The bank must disclose the reviewed financials by the independent external auditor once approved by the PMA.

The disclosed information includes: an unsigned Independent Accountants" Review Report, the Statement of Financial Position, the Statement of Comprehensive Income, Changes in Equity Ownership, the Statement of Cash Flows and Notes to the interim financial statements (20 notes). The company also provided its interim financial statements via the approved electronic form of disclosure applicable to the Banking & Financial Services Sector. The interim report also includes the additional information required by Article (38/2) of the PEX disclosure rules in place concerning management, issued shares, material changes and significant events that may have affected financial performance during the first half of the year.

According to company data for the first half of this year, net profit before taxes reached 332,190 USD, compared with a net profit before taxes of 793,426 USD from the first half of 2010, a net decrease of 58.1%. Total assets of the company have reached 173,546,788 USD as of June 30th, 2011, compared to total assets of 171,495,617 USD as of December 31st, 2010, a net increase of 1.2%. Total liabilities of the company have reached 145,703,632 USD as of June 30, 2011, compared to total liabilities of 143,618,289 USD as of December 31st, 2010, a net increase of 1.5%. Net ownership equity of the company has reached 27,843,156 USD as of June 30th, 2011, compared with a net ownership equity of 27,877,328 USD as of December 31st, 2010, a net decrease of 0.1% in the last six months.

Within the conclusion in the unsigned Independent Auditors’ Review Report (Ernst & Young), the following was conveyed: Based on our limited review, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the accompanying interim condensed financial statements are not, in all material respects, prepared in accordance with International Accounting Standard No. (34) . An additional paragraph, “Emphasis of a Matter”, was included after the conclusion paragraph and mentioned note #19, which discusses the option of raising capital of $50 million USD.