BPI contributed €214M to Spanish parent’s profit; €40M from Angola
BPI contributed 214 million euros to the 2020 financial results of CaixaBank, with a large slice of that from its stake in an Angola bank.
BPI, one of Portugal’s largest banks, contributed 214 million euros to the 2020 financial results of CaixaBank, the Spanish group of which it is now a part, with a large slice of that from its stake in an Angola bank, the parent company revealed on Friday.
BPI’s Portugal operations contributed 174 million euros and its international activities 40 million euros, with most of the latter amount representing dividends from Banco de Fomento Angola (BFA).
“My assessment of BPI’s evolution in 2020 is extraordinarily positive,” said CaixaBank’s CEO, Gonzalo Gortázar, at a news conference held in Madrid on Friday to present its results.
Although BPI’s full results are not to be released until next Thursday, 4 February, some figures from the bank were included in the CaixaBank presentation.
Gortázar expressed the view that there had been “good management of BPI’s problematic assets;” as of end-2020 it had 576 million euros in bad debts, down 15.5% from a year earlier, for a bad-debt ratio of 2.3%.
Meanwhile, Gortázar said, 99% of moratoriums “are being fulfilled,” saying that he was very confident that [this issue] will not mean a problem for BPI in 2021.”
At end-2020 there were 97,488 moratoriums in effect at BPI, with a total value of 5.62 billion euros.
Meanwhie, the gross credit portfolio increased by 5.5% in the past year, with credit to companies up 6.6% and clients’ resources up 9.5%.
Gortázar said that in Portugal, as in other countries, there is scope for consolidation in the banking sector but said that “BPI will not be part of this process.”
The integration of Spain’s Bankia into the CaixaBank group “will not directly affect BPI,” he added, arguing that it would instead give the Portuguese bank “an even stronger, more robust headquarters and greater protection.”
CaixaBank reported a 2020 net profit of 1.381 billion euros, down 19% on 2019, after making 1.252 billion euros in provisions to face the impact of Covid-19.
According to information sent to Spain’s securities markets regulator, the CNMV, CaixaBank stresses that, despite the drop in profit, “core” revenues resulting from its main activities – interest income, net rates and insurance income – had been practically stable, slipping by just 0.1% to 8.310 billion euros.
In the final quarter of 2020 alone, the group’s banking activity increased by 2.8% over the previous quarter and 1.7% over the same period in 2019, according to the submission.
The group last year had the highest turnover in its history, at 659.332 billion euros, up 7.8% on the 2019 figure.
