Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken Earnings: Dividend Disappoints, but Operating Performance Was Good

Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken reported full-year operating profits of SEK 46.0 billion ahead of the SEK 45.4 billion anticipated by consensus estimates collected by Infront. Despite the good operating performance, the stock traded down single-digit percentage points after the release, likely because the announced dividend and special dividend did not meet expectations. SEB announced an ordinary dividend of SEK 8.50 per share versus the SEK 8.90 consensus estimate and a SEK 3.00 per share special dividend versus expectations of SEK 4.43 per share. That said, we believe performance was good and raise our fair value estimate to SEK 166 per share from SEK 152 previously. Our change is driven by the time value of money since our last model update and better performance in net fee commission income than we had previously anticipated.