MILAN Italy’s UniCredit confirmed next year’s earnings goal on Thursday after reporting a smaller-than-expected drop in second-quarter profit, as trading gains and cost cuts helped offset weakening revenues.
UniCredit said net profit for the three months through June came in at 420 million euros ($499 million), down 77% from a year earlier but above an average analyst forecast of 347 million euros in a consensus provided by the bank.
Revenues totalled 4.2 billion euros, a touch ahead of expectations, helped by a rebound in the bank’s commercial operations after a lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic was eased.
When adjusted for one-off items such as a charge the bank incurred as it runs down its non-core business, underlying net profit stood at 0.5 billion euros. UniCredit confirmed an underlying net profit goal of 3.0-3.5 billion euros for next year.
Core capital strengthened in the quarter to 13.85% of assets, up from 13.44% at the end of March.
The bank booked 937 million euros in loan writedowns in the quarter, further increasing provisions against potential future losses linked to the impact of the pandemic.
UniCredit, which has 10% of its loan portfolio exposed to sectors worst hit by the virus crisis such as such airlines, shipping and tourism, wrote down loans for 1.3 billion euros in the first quarter after slashing its macroeconomic projections due to COVID-19.
($1 = 0.8418 euros)
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor
Comments
0 comment