(Bloomberg) -- The Swiss National Bank is set for bumper first-half earnings, making a payout to the government for 2024 more likely, economists at UBS estimate after the central bank suspended payments two years in a row.
The second-quarter result won’t significantly impact the high profit at the start of the year, UBS’s Florian Germanier and Alessandro Bee said in a note published on Wednesday. The SNB is scheduled to publish numbers next Wednesday.
The economists predict that the April-June period will see an outcome somewhere between a loss of 7 billion francs ($7.9 billion) and a profit of 3 billion francs. That would translate into a surplus of 50 billion to 60 billion francs for the first half and would keep hopes for a payout to government and cantons next year.
Germanier and Bee estimate that after large annual losses, the central bank would need to reach an annual result of at least 65 billion francs for a profit distribution to be made.
SNB’s earnings are influenced by equity and bond markets, the gold price and especially the exchange rate of the Swiss franc, with an appreciation of the currency usually hurting its bottom line. The franc’s climb to a record level against the euro had last year eradicated gains on the central bank’s capital and had seen it skip two payouts in a row for the first time in history.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
