UniCredit tops profit forecast, makes cloud investment
Better than forecast revenue in Q2, slightly ups goal
Takes provisions on Russia after court seizure
CEO says to wind down Russia business over 1-2 years
Adds detail on Russia in paragraphs 2-4, analyst comment in paragraph 12
By Valentina Za
MILAN, July 24 (Reuters) -Italian bank UniCredit CRDI.MI beat second-quarter profit expectations on Wednesday and said it was buying a Belgian digital bank that has its own cloud-based IT platform for 370 million euros ($401 million).
UniCredit, which has a large Russia presence and has turned to the European Court of Justice against European Central Bank demands it exits the country quickly, booked 100 million euros in provisions against possible losses in Russia in the quarter after having assets there seized by a court.
Asked in a television interview whether UniCredit planned to exit Russia, CEO Andrea Orcel said it would wind down its business there gradually over the course of one or two years.
The former UBS investment banking chief, Orcel became CEO at UniCredit in 2021 after failing to secure the role at Santander SAN.MC.
His dealmaking credentials have stoked speculation about potential mergers, especially after aborted attempts to move on Germany's Commerzbank CBKG.DE and Italy's Banco BPM BAMI.MI.
Its latest acquisition will help UniCredit speed up a digital transition which poses a major challenge to the sector and has become a focus for industry regulators.
UniCredit, whose digital investments have lagged those of peer Intesa Sanpaolo ISP.MI, will add 200 engineers, developers and data scientists by purchasing Belgium's Aion Bank and Poland's Vodeno, a cloud-based core banking system provider.
Banks globally face the hurdle of migrating their legacy IT systems onto the cloud. Intesa is partnering with British cloud banking technology provider ThoughtMachine.
Orcel compared Vodeno with ThoughtMachine in the television interview but said UniCredit would use it exclusively and not lease out its services.
"The transaction represents one of the first moves by a bank to acquire full ownership of a new technology (without any dependencies from third-party core banking providers)," UniCredit said.
PROFIT BEAT
Net profit in the second quarter rose 5% versus the previous three months to 2.7 billion euros, topping the 2.4 billion expected by analysts polled by the bank as revenue held up better than anticipated.
"Decent earnings beat driven by better fees," KBW analysts said.
UniCredit shares, which have outperformed the sector this year, were down 2% by 0751 GMT.
With euro zone interest rates peaking, Italian banks have vowed to increase net fees to make up for the shrinking gap between lending and deposits rates, which in recent quarters has driven profits to record levels.
UniCredit said net lending income eased 0.4% between April and June versus the first quarter. Fees rose 0.9% on a quarterly basis and 10% annually.
Revenue showed a smaller-than-anticipated 0.7% quarterly drop to 6.3 billion euros.
UniCredit raised its revenue forecast for the year slightly to above 23 billion euros, but kept a 2024 net profit goal of more than 8.5 billion euros. It plans to distribute at least 90% of that to shareholders, mostly through share buybacks.
($1 = 0.9219 euros)
Reporting by Valentina Za; editing by Jacqueline Wong, Jan Harvey and Jason Neely
Asset collegati
Ultime news
Disclaimer: le entità di XM Group forniscono servizi di sola esecuzione e accesso al nostro servizio di trading online, che permette all'individuo di visualizzare e/o utilizzare i contenuti disponibili sul sito o attraverso di esso; non ha il proposito di modificare o espandere le proprie funzioni, né le modifica o espande. L'accesso e l'utilizzo sono sempre soggetti a: (i) Termini e condizioni; (ii) Avvertenza sui rischi e (iii) Disclaimer completo. Tali contenuti sono perciò forniti a scopo puramente informativo. Nello specifico, ti preghiamo di considerare che i contenuti del nostro servizio di trading online non rappresentano un sollecito né un'offerta ad operare sui mercati finanziari. Il trading su qualsiasi mercato finanziario comporta un notevole livello di rischio per il tuo capitale.
Tutto il materiale pubblicato sul nostro servizio di trading online è unicamente a scopo educativo e informativo, e non contiene (e non dovrebbe essere considerato come contenente) consigli e raccomandazioni di carattere finanziario, di trading o fiscale, né informazioni riguardanti i nostri prezzi di trading, offerte o solleciti riguardanti transazioni che possano coinvolgere strumenti finanziari, oppure promozioni finanziarie da te non richieste.
Tutti i contenuti di terze parti, oltre ai contenuti offerti da XM, siano essi opinioni, news, ricerca, analisi, prezzi, altre informazioni o link a siti di terzi presenti su questo sito, sono forniti "così com'è", e vanno considerati come commenti generali sui mercati; per questo motivo, non possono essere visti come consigli di investimento. Dato che tutti i contenuti sono intesi come ricerche di investimento, devi considerare e accettare che non sono stati preparati né creati seguendo i requisiti normativi pensati per promuovere l'indipendenza delle ricerche di investimento; per questo motivo, questi contenuti devono essere considerati come comunicazioni di marketing in base alle leggi e normative vigenti. Assicurati di avere letto e compreso pienamente la nostra Notifica sulla ricerca di investimento non indipendente e la nostra Informativa sul rischio riguardante le informazioni sopra citate; tali documenti sono consultabili qui.