HONG KONG/LONDON — HSBC Holdings announced a $3 billion share buyback and upgraded its income outlook on Wednesday, as the bank showed progress in its efforts to shield its business from global interest rate cuts that may hit lending revenue.

The lender's shares rose 4 percent in London as investors cheered its stable first-half profit growth, gains in wealth management income.

Europe's biggest bank also set out a new goal for its return on average tangible equity - a key performance target - to be in the mid-teens in 2025, matching its estimate for 2024.

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HSBC, which is due to welcome new CEO Georges Elhedery in September following the retirement of Noel Quinn, said it had succeeded in reducing its sensitivity to rate cuts through an insurance strategy known as a structural hedge.

Whereas a 1 percentage point fall in global interest rates in 2022 would have wiped $7 billion off HSBC's annual revenue, Quinn told reporters that impact had dropped to a potential $2.7 billion hit as of June.

"It's notable for me that sensitivity to interest rates is reduced ... It has done well as interest rates rose but expectation is that will reverse quickly," Iain Pyle, a portfolio manager at HSBC shareholder abrdn , told Reuters.

The bank is well-priced as a high quality lender with growth potential and attractive shareholder distributions, he said.

The new return target and earnings that beat market expectations should give investors confidence, Jefferies analyst Joe Dickerson added.

The Asia-focused bank said it will pay an interim dividend of 10 cents a share, the second payment of 2024 following 31 cents announced last quarter.

The $3 billion share buyback followed a $5 billion buyback announced earlier this year. It means the bank will have paid shareholders $36 billion in dividends and $18 billion in buybacks over Quinn's tenure as CEO.

For the first six months this year, HSBC said pretax profit fell 0.4 percent to $21.6 billion but was better than the $20.5 billion average of broker estimates compiled by HSBC.

New client numbers surge

HSBC reported an 8 percent rise in international customer numbers to 2.7 million in January-June, with 345,000 new-to-bank account openings in Hong Kong.

"We can't rule out any additional ECL (expected credit loss), but we believe by and large, that would be nowhere near the ECL we've taken in the year of 2023," Elhedery told reporters on a conference call.

January-June wealth revenue rose 12 percent from the same period of 2023 to $4.3 billion, driven by a 16 percent increase in private banking income as well as other areas such as asset management.

Revenue at the lender's Global Banking and Markets investment banking unit grew 5 percent, benefiting from an upswing in its equities business, in line with trends at rival banks.

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It upgraded its net interest income forecast for 2024 to around $43 billion from at least $41 billion.

The bank also named Jonathan Bingham as interim group chief financial officer, effective Sept. 2.

Bingham, who joined the bank in 2020 after 20 years at accounting firm KPMG, will retain his existing duties as global financial controller, HSBC said, as it continues the process of identifying a permanent CFO.