BCR announces a 127 million euro profit after Q3

While after Q3 in 2012 BCR reported losses of more than EUR 172 million, the Group announces a net profit of almost EUR127 million within the first nine months of this year, keeping the improvement tendency reported for Semester 1. Besides that, the costs related to the risk provisions went down significantly compared to the same period in 2012, registering a decrease by 37.9% to EUR371 million according to the data showed in a BCR release.

The operating result also incremented amounting approximately EUR424 million, up 2.6% over the similar interval last year, however, the operating income suffered a slight decrease of 0.5 percentage. There’s a decrease in the operating costs as well, that declined between January – September 31 this year. Thus, these operating expenses cost BCR around EUR255 million, 5.2% less than last year due to the extended optimization measures and a severe cost management. Based on that, the cost/income ratio improved, too, reaching 37% compared to 39.4% after the first nine months the past year.

‘Our efforts to redress the bank are becoming visible: business restructuring is completed, the total stock of bad loans has diminished for the first time since 2008 and the credits portfolio rebalances in favor of local currency loans. In a stable and predictable context of the market, we will be able to focus more and more on a healthy growth, pursuing an adequate balance between risks and revenue. The RON9 billion capital allocated to support BCR Group ensures us a solid position of growing the business and supporting the Romanian economy.’ Tomas Spurny, Executive President of BCR, said.

BCR maintains the leading position in the banking sector, despite a 7% decrease in total assets (about EUR15.3 billion at the end of September 2013, while they amounted more than EUR16.4 billion at the end of 2012) and intends to focus on RON credits in order to reverse the combination of currencies in its medium and long-term credits portfolio. Apart from that, BCR aims to make full use of its strong capacity of RON self-financing states the same release.