Standard Bank trading update

Standard Bank released a trading update yesterday, this is for their full year to end December 2011. Copy paste time, because in life, as Einstein demonstrated about telephone numbers, he did not remember his own and once looked it up in a phone book when asked, it is easier to use someone else's information: "The group anticipates that normalised headline earnings for the year ended 31 December 2011 will be approximately 20% higher than the previous corresponding period. With respect to results on an International Financial Reporting Standards basis, shareholders are advised that Standard Bank Group's earnings per share, headline earnings per share ("HEPS") and diluted HEPS are expected to be between 18% and 22% higher than the comparative figures for the year ended 31 December 2010."

Middle of the range at 20 percent on 2010 EPS of 722.14 cents, HEPS of 735.2 and diluted HEPS of 708.6 will be EPS of 866.57 in 2011 and HEPS of 882.24 and diluted HEPS of 850.32 cents in the same year. ZA cents of course. The share price? Where does that trade? Just shy of 110 ZAR a share. Not cheap, not expensive, on a historical basis (let us use the HEPS number) at around twelve and a half times earnings. Let us presume dividend cover remains at two and a half times, then the dividend will come in below the last years dividend and the year prior to that. So, I am going to presume that we will see another payment (net to the shareholder) will be the same as last year, 386 cents for the year, 275 for the second half. Decent enough trading update, but well short of 2007 and 2008 still, results due on the 8th of March 2012.