Share price performance

In 2021, investors’ sentiment towards banking stocks improved markedly.  Rotation into ‘value’ companies at the start of the year, improving macro forecasts, accelerating pace of vaccinations against the coronavirus as well as higher than expected inflation readouts and ensuing expectations about imminent interest rate hikes were supporting banking share prices throughout Europe in the early part of the year. In the second half of May, just after the Poland’s Supreme Court postponed the verdict regarding Swiss francs to an indefinite future, share prices of Polish banks improved further. In the second half of June, news of the rapidly spreading new delta variant of the coronavirus as well as lower than expected inflation readout undermined banking share prices in Poland .

In subsequent months, stubbornly higher than expected inflation readouts and ensuing expectations about imminent interest rate hikes put banking share prices back en vogue.

Finally in 4Q21, the long-awaited increases of interest rates took place with the reference rate increased in three steps to 1.75% from 0.1%. While the hikes were positive from the bank sector perspective, yet some investors had discounted these earlier (since the start of 2021 WIG-Banki, the banking index, was one of the strongest performing sector indices) and as a result banking shares lost part of their lustre.

During the twelve months ending 31 December 2021, WIG broad market index grew 22%, WIG20 index of largest companies grew 14% while WIG Banks index gained 81%. At the same time, the share price of Bank Millennium increased 151%, making it the 2^nd best performing banking stock on the WSE.

In 2021, daily turnover of Bank Millennium shares averaged at PLN8.2 million and was 20% higher than in the preceding year.

Bank Millennium’s shares are included in following indexes on the Warsaw Stock Exchange: WIG, WIG Banks, WIG 30, mWIG 40, WIG Poland and WIG-ESG.