PARIS: Credit Agricole reported a more than twelvefold gain in quarterly profit on Tuesday from a year-ago period depressed by Greece and Italy-related provisions as France's No. 3 bank refocuses on squeezing value out of its home market.
Net income in the three months ended June 30 rose to 696 million euros ($922 million) from 56 million a year earlier, exceeding the 514 million average of estimates in a Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S poll of analysts.
Credit Agricole Chief Executive Jean-Paul Chifflet said he expected the bank - which reported a nearly 4 billion euro loss for 2012 on costs related to its exit from Greece and asset writedowns - to deliver a "significantly positive" result for the full year.
In a sign that finding growth in a sluggish French economy remains a challenge, however, the bank reported a 0.9 percent drop in revenue to 4.39 billion euros, compared with an average poll estimate of 4.16 billion.
Results were mixed at the lender's retail units, while profit at its investment bank jumped 38 percent, helped by fixed-income capital markets, following in the footsteps of similarly strong results at rival Societe Generale last week.
Credit Agricole last week finalised the long-awaited sale of 80.1 percent of its Asian CLSA brokerage unit for $842 million, one of a series of moves over the past year aimed at reversing a one-time expansion binge into investment banking and foreign markets.
The bank will book a $1.15 billion gain on the sale - including the original sale of a 19.9 percent stake in July 2012 - in the third quarter.
Investor optimism that the bank's shares - which trade at a price to book ratio of 0.45 compared with a sector average of 0.68 - were undervalued has helped fuel a rebound. The stock is up 29 percent so far this year, nearly triple the European sector.
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