Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控) yesterday said its third-quarter net profits jumped 23 percent to NT$4.8 billion from a year ago, after reporting a 11.5 percent decline to NT$3.43 billion in the previous quarter.
The company expects to see similar growth momentum in the fourth quarter, the company's executive vice president Perry Chang (張明田) said at a press briefing yesterday. The company has no plan to raise its profit goal this year in view of the sluggish stock markets, he added.
The company released its first nine-month earnings report yesterday. The third-quarter figures were derived by subtracting first-half profit from nine-month figures.
Chinatrust Financial reported NT$16.6 billion in pre-tax earnings, or NT$2.84 earnings per share, in the first nine months, meeting 75 percent of its full-year forecast of NT$22 billion.
"With steady growth, [we] should have no problem meeting the full-year profit goal," Chang said.
Compared to the same period last year, Chinatrust Financial saw a 12 percent growth in net profits. If the NT$700 million that was spent on goodwill amortization for its merger with Grand Commercial Bank (
Chang attributed the com-pany's steady profit growth in the past three quarters to its fee income, which saw a 50 percent growth, or NT$4.7 billion, from a year ago. The net interest income also saw a 10 percent growth year-on-year, or NT$2.3 billion, he said.
Chinatrust Financial's consumer banking and corporate banking businesses also fared well in the first nine months. The company's wealth management business saw 35 percent growth in revenues to NT$660 billion and 12 percent growth in bank loans to NT$333 billion. Its credit card balance also reported 23 percent growth to NT$202.3 billion.
Although an investment loss of NT$1.1 billion on the stock market was the main reason behind Chinatrust Financial's second-quarter profit drop, Chang said that the company made NT$50 million profit from stock investments in the third quarter.
In terms of asset quality, Chang said that Chinatrust Financial's non-performing loans ratio stands at 1.74 percent, which may later grow to 2.11 percent after bad loans from Fengshan Credit Co-operative (鳳山信合社) are covered in mid-December.
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