Cooperative banks report €28m in after-tax Q1 profit

The Cooperative Central Bank, Cyprus’s second largest lender bailed out by the government with €1.7bn, said that it generated in the first quarter of the year a total of €28m in after-tax profit compared to €37.1m in the respective quarter of 2015.

The drop in profitability was mainly on reduced net interest income which fell to €74.5 in January to March from €89.5m in the respective quarter of 2015, the co-op bank said in an emailed statement on Monday. The bank also saw its operating expenses rise to €45.2m from €41.8m respectively mainly on other operating expenses which rose by almost €2m to €18.4m in the first quarter. Staff costs rose by €854,000 to €24.4m.

The bank, owned almost entirely by the government, saw its non-performing loan ratio drop marginally to 59.3 per cent of its loan portfolio or €7.4bn, partly as a result of the latter dropping to €12.5bn from €12.8bn in the fourth quarter of 2015, the bank said. At the end of December, the bank’s non-performing loans stood at €7.6bn.
The Cooperative Central Bank said that its common equity tier 1 capital ratio rose to 15.7 per cent which includes the first quarter profit. The bank included a total of €10.2m in provisions for impairments of customer loans in its first quarter earnings which dropped to €3.3bn.

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