July 30, 2010 – TOKYO, July 30 (Reuters) - Mizuho Financial Group, Japan's second-largest bank by assets, swung back on Friday to a profit for its first quarter, buoyed by smaller bad-loan costs and gains in bond trading.
The bank said net profit came in at 149.8 billion yen ($1.7 billion) for the April-June quarter, up from a 4.5 billion yen loss a year earlier, when it was hit by bad derivatives bets. Analysts estimates for the quarter were not available.
The bank and its rivals saw a drop in bad-loan costs as there were fewer bankruptcies in Japan during the quarter with the economy staging a moderate recovery.
Their profits were also helped by gains in bond trading, as Japanese government bond prices rose with long-term yields continuing to trend lower amid lingering global economic uncertainty.
For the full-year through March, the bank kept a forecast of 430 billion yen in net profit, from 239.4 billion yen a year earlier and above a mean estimate of 364.7 billion yen in a poll of 12 analysts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Shares of Mizuho have lost 15 percent so far this year, underperforming a 9.6 percent fall in the benchmark Nikkei average. (Reporting by Taiga Uranaka; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
