BCP Poland banking unit halves H1 loss as underlying profit doubles

Bank Millennium, a bank in Poland that is 50.1% owned by Portugal’s BCP, halved its first-half loss to PLN262.6 million (€56.6 million) from a year earlier, as net profit before extraordinary items more than doubled, BCP announced on Tuesday.

In the first six months of 2021, Bank Millennium had posted a net loss of PLN511.6 million, recalled BCP in a statement sent to Portugal’s Securities Markets Commission (CMVM).

The statement makes special mention of provisions for foreign exchange (FX) variations, the cost of the Institutional Protection Scheme (IPS) for the financial sector that it was obliged to join, as part of Poland’s Bank Guarantee Fund (BFG) scheme.

“Excluding extraordinary items, i.e., provisions for FX mortgage legal risk, costs of amicable settlements with FX-mortgage borrowers and other legal costs, and with linear distribution of BFG resolution fund fee (without net impact of IPS contribution), the net profit would be PLN 1,127.8 million (EUR 243.2 million), representing an increase on a comparable basis of 106.2%,” it reads. “The adjusted ROE [return on equity] amounted to 23.0%.”