Santander Upbeat on Banco Popular Buy as Profit Rises -- Update

Banco Santander SA said Friday that net profit and net interest income rose in line with figures it had pre-announced early this month when it launched a capital increase to fund its cleanup of Banco Popular Español SA.

Net profit rose to EUR1.75 billion ($2.04 billion) in the second quarter from EUR1.3 billion a year earlier. Net interest income was EUR8.61 billion compared with EUR7.57 billion. Those figures include its acquisition of Banco Popular.

Santander Executive Chairman Ana Botín said that executives are "extremely confident that the acquisition of Popular will deliver a return on investment of 13%-14% by 2019."

Santander's capital ratio was 9.58% in June compared with 10.66% in March under international regulations known as "fully loaded" Basel III criteria. Santander has among the lowest ratios of major European banks and investors are closely attuned to how it builds its capital.

Taking into account Santander's EUR7.07 billion capital increase, which closed Wednesday, its "fully loaded" capital ratio was 10.72% as of June 17, which the bank said keeps it on track to meet its target of above 11% in 2018.

Santander's ratio of bad loans to total loans edged up with the acquisition of Banco Popular to 5.37% in the second quarter from 3.74% in the first quarter. Excluding Banco Popular, that ratio would have fallen to 3.55%. Banco Popular's balance sheet was weighed down by tens of billions of euros worth of foreclosures, unsold land and other nonperforming assets accumulated when Spain's real estate boom went bust starting in 2008.

Concerns about how Banco Popular was coping with its soured assets, and whether it would be able to find a buyer or raise capital, accelerated into an outright bank run earlier this year. Banco Popular was rescued by Spanish and European Union authorities and sold to Santander for a token EUR1 on June 7.

Since Santander's figures were expected, investors and analysts will be listening closely to the conference call held by executives later Friday morning for more details about how Santander expects to dispose of Banco Popular's property assets.

In Santander's Brazil unit, net profit rose strongly year-over-year in the second quarter. Meanwhile, net profit fell in the bank's U.K. unit in both euros and sterling.

Write to Jeannette Neumann at jeannette.neumann@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 28, 2017 02:19 ET (06:19 GMT)