SAO PAULO, July 29 (Reuters) – Banco Santander Brasil’s second-quarter net profit fell 17.6% to 3.01 billion reais ($586.86 million), the lender said on Wednesday, below the 3.9 billion reais expected by analysts polled by LSEG.
Latin America’s largest economy is a key market for its Spanish parent Banco Santander, which reported its own results last week.
• Net interest income — earnings on loans minus deposit costs — fell 0.4% to 15.34 billion reais.
• Santander Brasil pointed to tighter spreads in the period due to lower exposure to the mass income segment.
• Provisions for loan losses rose 6.5% year-on-year to 8.26 billion reais.
• “This performance reflects certain one-off effects from additional provisions for wholesale cases and the review of write-off criteria, in addition to a credit environment that remains challenging, with impacts concentrated in specific portfolios,” the bank said.
• Return on average equity (ROAE), a gauge of profitability, stood at 12.5%, down from 16.4% a year earlier.
($1 = 5.1290 reais)
(Reporting by Gabriel Araujo in Sao Paulo and Michael Susin in Barcelona; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Tomasz Janowski)
