BNP Paribas, the biggest French bank, reported on Friday that its first-quarter net income rose nearly 10%, helped by the sale of a real estate business, and said it was on track to reach its capital strength targets.
The bank, based in Paris, posted net income of 2.9 billion euros ($3.8 billion), up 9.6% from the same period a year earlier. That was better-than-the-average estimate of anlaysts surveyed by Reuters, who had expected a profit of around 2.3 billion euros.
BNP Paribas? revenue in the first three months of the year totaled 9.9 billion euros, down 15.4% from a year earlier. The bank said revenue was hurt by an 843-million-euro charge on a revaluation of its own debt, a 142-million-euro loss on the sale of sovereign bonds and a 74-million-euro loss on the sale of loans.
Without those charges, the firm?s revenue would have declined by only 6.3% compared with the first quarter of 2011, according to a company statement.
First-quarter net income was bolstered by one-time items, including 1.5 billion euros from the sale of a 29% stake in Kl?pierre, a publicly traded French real estate investment trust. The stake was sold in March to Simon Property Group. Without the exceptional gains, first-quarter income would have fallen 22% to 2.0 billion, the bank said.