Eurobank Ergasias SA
Net interest income of €342 million for the period, down from €356 million a year earlier. Net banking fee and commission income also dipped, to €71 million from €72 million.
The Greek lender booked impairment losses relating to loans and advances to customers of €183 million, an increase from the year-ago €170 million. Other impairment losses and provisions also widened year over year, to €11 million from €2 million.
Restructuring costs rose on a yearly basis to €75 million from €8 million.
For the first half, the bank posted an attributable net profit of €26 million, down from €36 million a year earlier.
Eurobank said its stock of nonperforming exposures was reduced by €2.4 billion in the first half, of which €2.2 billion was from the second quarter and was mainly driven by the €1.7 billion securitization of mortgage loans and the acceleration of negative NPE formation.
The group's NPE ratio was 32.8% as of June-end, compared to 37% at the end of 2018 and is down by 7.9 percentage points year over year. Eurobank said it remains committed to its target of a single-digit NPE ratio by the end of 2021. Provisions over NPEs was 54.5% at the end of June, compared to 55.9% a year earlier.
As of June-end, the bank's common equity Tier 1 ratio stood at 15.9%, compared to 14.2% at the end of 2018. Its total capital adequacy ratio was 18.4% at the end of June, compared to 16.7% as of Dec. 31, 2018.
CEO Fokion Karavias said the full lifting of crisis-era capital controls in Greece sends a strong signal of the country's return to normality and should further boost economic sentiment. "While focused on restoring all the bank's key metrics to normal European sector levels, we are also streamlining our efforts to making the most of the new environment in our main market in Greece," he added.
