Following the releases from Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and China CITIC Bank, Industrial Bank has now presented its 2025 report card. In the just-disclosed preliminary earnings report, this joint-stock bank's revenue and profit growth figures appear almost parallel—in 2025, Industrial Bank achieved operating revenue of 212.741 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.24%; its net profit attributable to equity holders was 77.469 billion yuan, rising by a mere 0.34%. Against the broader industry backdrop of persistently narrowing net interest margins, this near-stagnant growth is not surprising, yet it vividly illustrates the increasing difficulty commercial banks face in using scale expansion to offset declining prices.
A more telling indicator of shareholder returns, the weighted average ROE, declined by 0.74 percentage points to 9.15%, while basic earnings per share also dipped slightly to 3.46 yuan due to share capital expansion. Although management emphasized in the announcement that operations were "progressing steadily with enhanced resilience," the data suggests that the strategy of relying on non-interest income to fill the gap left by interest income faced significant challenges in 2025.
On the asset side, as of the end of 2025, Industrial Bank's total assets expanded to 11.09 trillion yuan, growing at a rate of 5.57%, maintaining a relatively restrained expansion pace. A notable feature is the "scissors gap" between deposit and loan growth rates; specifically, the loan balance grew by only 3.70%, significantly lower than the overall asset growth rate, while the deposit balance grew by 7.18%, nearly double the loan growth rate. This divergence highlights a dual reality currently facing the banking sector: on one hand, quality credit demand remains scarce, with an "asset shortage" curbing banks' impulse for balance sheet expansion; on the other hand, the strong deposit growth confirms the "effective reduction of liability costs" mentioned in the announcement, indicating banks are proactively building a defense for net interest margins by absorbing low-cost liabilities.
Regarding asset quality, the risk baseline remains solid, yet underlying pressures are emerging: the non-performing loan ratio edged up by 1 basis point to 1.08%, still within a relatively favorable range for the industry. However, the NPL balance increased by 2.774 billion yuan, indicating that pressure from the generation of new non-performing loans persists under the dual strategy of "controlling new additions while promoting disposal." A signal worth noting is the decline in the provision coverage ratio: by the end of 2025, this metric fell by 9.37 percentage points to 228.41%. While this level remains well above regulatory requirements and indicates ample risk absorption capacity, the reduction in provisioning intensity, against a backdrop of minimal net profit growth (0.34%), may have served to smooth out profits to some extent.
At the strategic level, Industrial Bank continues to strengthen its focus on key areas such as technology, green finance, and inclusive finance. Looking ahead, the real question for Industrial Bank is whether this "low-speed cruising" state has bottomed out. Although the surface-level data appears subdued, the optimization of the asset-liability structure, effective management of liability costs, and a still-substantial provision buffer leave room for a potential stabilization of net interest margins in the future. The year 2025 was one of difficult balancing between scale and profitability for Industrial Bank; whether a genuine bottoming-out and recovery has been achieved will likely require further validation from the full annual report data.
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