Nama makes almost €12m quarterly profit

The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) made a profit of €11.9 million in the three months to the end of last September, bringing its total profit for the first three quarters of 2019 to about €60 million, its latest accounts reveal.

The agency, which was set up in 2010 to take property loans off the banks’ balance sheets, is now sitting on assets of €5.4 billion, including cash balances of €3.49 billion and loan assets valued at €1.46 billion. It has accumulated a profits pile of about €4.2 billion to date.

The figures are contained in Nama's Q3 accounts for last year, which were sent to the Government in December and have only just been released as they have been laid before the Oireachtas.

In a letter to Paschal Donohoe, Minister for Finance, Nama's then-chairman, Frank Daly, and chief executive Brendan McDonagh respectively, highlight that the agency generated about €811 million in cash in the first nine months of 2019. Nama says it generated a further €400 million in cash in the closing quarter, giving a total of €45.2 billion in cash generated to date.

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In the first nine months of 2019, Nama’s cash balances were boosted by property and loan sales of about €732 million and €79 million in repayments from builders whose loans were acquired by the agency.

Update

Nama’s letter to the Government also provides an update on the number of housing units it has helped to deliver. It says it has “facilitated the delivery” of more than 16,000 units, including 11,200 which it fund directly itself and a further 5,100 that were built on sites it sold to developers.

Nama has previously signalled it expects to generate a €4 billion surplus and the first €2 billion will be handed over to the State this year. It said it also expects to select a preferred bidder for a huge regeneration scheme in Poolbeg, southeast of Dublin’s inner city, before the end of March this year.