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Sberbank is the largest bank in Russia and one of the country's oldest financial institutions: its history is counted from the savings offices established by a decree of 1841. Today it is not only a bank but also a group of technology services, from food delivery to cloud computing. Its ordinary and preferred shares trade on the Moscow Exchange under the tickers SBER and SBERP.
The bank's main source of earnings is its interest margin: the difference between what it receives on the loans it has issued and what the money it has raised costs it. Sberbank's advantage here is structural: a significant part of its liabilities consists of current accounts and retail deposits, which are cheaper than market borrowing. The wider the gap between the cost of money and the rate at which it is lent out, the more the bank earns.
The second most important line is fee and commission income: cash and settlement services, acquiring, transfers, brokerage and insurance products. This income requires almost no capital and depends less on the phase of the credit cycle, which is why the bank has been steadily increasing its share.
The third layer is the non-financial services of the ecosystem. Their contribution to profit is not yet comparable with that of banking, but they serve a different purpose: they keep the customer inside the perimeter more cheaply than advertising does.
Lending to individuals — mortgages, consumer loans, credit cards — and deposit-taking. The most mass-market part of the business and the main source of cheap funding.
Lending to companies, settlement services, payroll schemes, trade finance. Ticket sizes here are larger and the risk is more concentrated: the problems of one large borrower show up in the financial statements immediately.
Acquiring, transfers, account servicing. Income that requires no capital and is only loosely tied to the credit cycle.
E-commerce, delivery, media services, a cloud platform, artificial intelligence development. A business line that costs money today for the sake of retaining the customer tomorrow.
Strengths and weaknesses describe the business itself. Opportunities and threats describe what may happen around it.
It is a universal bank: it takes deposits from individuals and companies and issues loans — mortgage, consumer, corporate — and also handles settlements and payments. A group of non-financial services has been built around the banking core: delivery, e-commerce, media, a cloud platform.
The controlling stake is held by the state — since 2020 it has been managed by the government through the Ministry of Finance. The remaining shares are traded on the exchange and belong to private and institutional investors.
SBER shares are ordinary shares and carry the right to vote at the shareholders' meeting. SBERP shares are preferred: they usually carry no vote, but they have priority when dividends are paid. At Sberbank the dividend on both types of shares has historically been the same, so the difference comes down to the price of the stock and the voting right.
Yes, the dividend policy provides for distributing around half of net profit under international reporting standards, provided capital adequacy is above the set threshold. The specific amounts and record dates change every year — they are collected in the dividend section of this profile.
Above all on the interest margin — the difference between lending and funding rates — and on the volume of provisions for possible loan losses. That is why the bank's result is closely tied to the key rate and to the state of the economy: in a crisis provisions grow and eat into profit even when income is unchanged.