MOSCOW, May 29 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s largest bank Sberbank posted an IFRS net profit of 88.5 billion rubles ($2.8 billion) in January-March 2013, down by 4 percent on the same period last year, the lender said on Wednesday.
Sberbank’s net financial result was just above a consensus forecast of analysts polled by Prime news agency who expected the bank’s first-quarter net profit at 88.1 billion rubles.
As analysts predicted, increased provisions for loan impairment and lower interest margins were the main factors for the first quarter net profit fall.
The net provision charge for loan impairment for January-March 2013 was 31.8 billion rubles, compared with 3.2 billion rubles in net income from the release of provisions in the first quarter of 2012.
“This result represents a gradual return to a more normalized level of cost of risk by the end of the recovery cycle,” the bank said in a statement.
Net interest margin for the quarter declined to 5.9 percent from 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 and 6.0 percent in the first quarter last year.
