Itau Unibanco is the biggest private lender in Latin America. On Tuesday, it reported a 15.2% increase in second-quarter profits compared to the same time last year. This was due to higher revenues and lower costs.
Itau made a net recurring profit of 10.07 billion reals ($1.8 billion) in the quarter that ended in June. This was a little more than the 9.99 billion reais that LSEG asked analysts to guess.
The company made more money than it spent. Its return on equity went up from 20.9% to 22.4%.
Analysts were happy with the results, even though the net profit was mostly in line with what they expected.
“An overall healthy print by Itau Unibanco,” Citi analysts wrote in a note. “The bank maintains strong momentum across the board and continues accumulating capital, which should bode well for investors’ total returns in the mid-term.”
Itau’s major competitors, Bradesco and Santander Brasil, both reported net income that was higher than what the market thought it would be.
Itau’s net recurring profit went up because its net interest income went up by 6.4% each year. Net interest income is the difference between loans and bank costs, and it is the company’s main source of income.
The bank’s credit portfolio grew by almost 6% from the previous quarter to 1.25 trillion reais, which helped the performance. This was because Itau sped up credit growth after a few slow quarters.
In the past two years, the bank has been reviewing the loans it gives to customers with a lot of debt. This has slowed the growth of its portfolio, but officials said it would now start to speed up loans again to meet its 2024 goals.
Analysts at J.P. Morgan said it was a “good” quarter and pointed out that loan growth sped up. “Consistency continues to summarize Itau with another good quality result,” they said.
Itau did not repay any loans that were more than 90 days past due at a rate of 2.7%, which was the same as the previous quarter and 0.3 percentage points lower than at the same time last year.
Itau’s cost of credit went down almost 7% from a year ago to 8.8 billion reais, which helped its net ongoing profit.
