By Andrei Skvarsky.
Kazakhstan’s biggest lender, Halyk Bank, is “fundamentally undervalued”, a distinguished Russian financier has said, citing upbeat statistics released by the Kazakh institution.
For the first quarter of 2021, Halyk reported a year-on-year net profit that was 5 per cent up on the first three months of 2020 and higher than consensus forecasts.
The bank’s assets grew 13 per cent in year-on-year terms in the first quarter, Pavel Teplukhin, general partner at Moscow-based investment boutique Matrix Capital and a high-profile figure in Russia’s financial sector, said during an online news briefing.
In May, Halyk made a record month-on-month net profit of 45 per cent, he said.
Teplukhin, who two decades ago played key roles in building the financial sector of post-Soviet Russia, was generally positive about the economy of Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic 11 times the size of Britain in area but with a population of less than one-third of that of the UK.
Kazakhstan’s gross domestic product is growing comparatively fast, the country has a small debt burden and possesses substantial foreign exchange reserves, according to Teplukhin.
After shrinking by 1.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2021, the Kazakh economy showed “signs of forceful revitalisation” in the second quarter, Teplukhin said, adding that key drivers of it had included industrial production, the service sector, construction and investment in non-extractive industries.
This year’s sharp commodity price rises are likely to benefit Kazakhstan, whose economy is chiefly a commodity producer, he said.
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