Spain’s CaixaBank, the owner of BPI in Portugal, made a profit of 2.675 million euros in the first half of the year, up 25.2% from the same months in 2023, the bank said on Wednesday.
In its statement, CaixaBank highlighted the impact of growth in loans issued and customer resources on its results in the period from January to June.
Client resources reached 667,424 million euros at the end of June, up 5.9% compared to the end of the previous half-year (December 2023), while the bank emphasized that it had increased the number of clients to 20.2 million in Spain and Portugal.
As for loans, the bank’s portfolio of “healthy loans” grew by 2.2% compared to the end of 2023, to 351,700 million euros, “in a context where new production is growing at a good pace,” CaixaBank said in the same statement.
In the case of home loans, CaixaBank’s loan portfolio stopped falling in the second quarter (April-June), although it fell by 0.4% overall in the first half of the year.
Consumer credit grew by 4.4%, while loans to companies increased by 2.3%.
According to CaixaBank, there was “good progress” in the issuance of new loans “in all segments”.
Thus, new home purchase loans (issued in this first half of the year) increased by 42.8% compared to the same period in 2023 and reached 6.648 million euros.
In the case of consumer credit, new loans reached 6,105 million euros and grew by 15.4% compared to the first half of last year, while in the case of companies the growth was 2.3%, to 21,517 million.
CaixaBank stressed that the results for the first half of the year reflect “an improvement in activity in a context of economic dynamism and stabilisation of interest rates.”
The interest margin (the difference between the loan granted and the interest paid by the bank) reached EUR 5,572 million in the first half of the year (20.5% more than in the same period of 2023).
Gross profit, which includes all current revenues, reached EUR 7,701 million, up 15.4%.
CaixaBank has 20.2 million customers and a network of 4,100 branches in Spain and Portugal.
The CaixaBank group’s profit last year amounted to 4.816 million euros, up 53.9% from 2022.
Regarding its activities in Portugal, CaixaBank Executive Chairman (CEO) Gonçalo Gortazar said this Wednesday at a press conference in Valencia, Spain, that BPI continues to grow both in results and in market share, which he considers “most remarkable.”
According to data presented at a press conference, in the first half of the year, BPI (which presents its results this Wednesday in Lisbon) achieved 14.4% of the mortgage market share and 11.2% of corporate loans in Portugal.
In terms of deposits, BPI now held 10.6% of the market share in the first half of the year.
Market share gains have been steady since 2017, when CaixaBank took control of BPI, stressed Gonçalo Gortazar, who said business in Portugal was “going quite well” and that the Spanish bank was “very happy”.
Gonçalo Gortázar assured that CaixaBank does not intend to buy other banks in Portugal or other countries.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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