At a glance
Our strong performance provides firm financial foundations. We look to the future with confidence and clarity of purpose.
For the year ended 31 December 2024
Highlights:
- Profit before tax of $32.3bn, up $2.0bn, including a $1.0bn net favourable impact from notable items
- We approved a fourth interim dividend of $0.36 per share
- This resulted in total dividends of $0.87 per share in respect of 2024, including a $0.21 special dividend following the sale of our business in Canada
- We intend to initiate a further share buyback of up to $2bn; this brings the total returns to shareholders in respect of 2024 to $26.9bn through buybacks and dividends
- Operating expenses of $33.0bn were $1.0bn, or 3%, higher than in 2023; target basis operating expenses rose by 5%, in line with our cost growth target
- Our common equity tier 1 (CET1) capital ratio was 14.9%
- Our return on average tangible equity (RoTE) was 14.6% (or 16.0% excluding notable items)
Group CEO
“Our strong 2024 performance provides firm financial foundations upon which to build for the future, as we prioritise delivering sustainable strategic growth and the best outcomes for our customers.
“Since becoming CEO, I have focused on simplifying how we operate and injected energy and intent into the way we deliver our strategy. We are creating a simple, more agile, focused bank built on our core strengths.
“We continue to take deliberate and decisive steps. This includes creating four complementary, clearly differentiated businesses, aligning our structure to our strategy and reshaping our portfolio at pace and with purpose.”
Georges Elhedery, HSBC Group CEO
19 February 2025
Building on our strengths
Profit before tax by global business, FY24
In October, we announced that we would simplify our organisational structure to help accelerate delivery against our strategic priorities.
As of 1 January 2025, we are operating through four new businesses: Hong Kong, UK, Corporate and Institutional Banking, and International Wealth and Premier Banking.
Outlook
We are now targeting a mid-teens RoTE in each of the three years from 2025 to 2027, excluding the impact of notable items, while acknowledging the outlook for interest rates remains volatile and uncertain, particularly in the medium term.
We expect banking net interest income of around $42bn in 2025. Our current expectation reflects modelling of a number of market-dependent factors.
We retain a Group-wide focus on cost discipline. We are targeting growth in target basis operating expenses of approximately 3% in 2025, compared with 2024.
Our cost target includes the impact of simplification-related saves associated with our reorganisation, which aims to generate approximately $0.3bn of cost reductions in 2025, with a commitment to an annualised reduction of $1.5bn in our cost base expected by the end of 2026. To deliver these reductions, we plan to incur severance and other upfront costs of $1.8bn over 2025 and 2026, which will be classified as notable items.
We expect ECL charges (expected credit losses and other credit impairment charges) as a percentage of average gross loans to continue to be within our medium-term planning range of 30bps to 40bps in 2025 (including lending held for sale balances).
Over the medium to long term, we continue to expect mid-single digit percentage growth for year-on-year customer lending balances. For fee and other income in Wealth, we expect double-digit percentage average annual growth over the medium term.
We intend to continue to manage the CET1 capital ratio within our medium-term target range of 14% to 14.5%, with a dividend payout ratio target basis of 50% for 2025, excluding material notable items and related impacts.
Context behind the numbers
The increase in profit before tax compared with 2023 included a net favourable impact of $1.0bn from notable items. In 2024, notable items included a gain of $4.8bn on the disposal of our banking business in Canada, the impacts of the disposal of our business in Argentina, comprising a $1.0bn loss on disposal, and the recycling of foreign currency reserve losses and other reserves of $5.2bn.
The growth in our operating expenses was mainly due to higher spend and investment in technology and the impacts of inflation, partly offset by reductions related to our business disposals in Canada and France, and from lower levies in the UK and the US.
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