Banco Santander reports good earnings... 20% over last year... my quick calculations show them earning about $0.88 this year if the fourth quarter averages what the first three have... which means they're at a PE of around 12, with a growth rate of 20%... sounds like a bargain to me...
MADRID -- Spanish banking group Banco Santander Central Hispano SA reported Tuesday a net profit of 201.51 billion pesetas ($1.27 billion or 1.21 billion euros) in the first nine months of the year, up 20% from 167.67 billion pesetas the same period a year ago.
BSCH said the advance was the result of its strong growth of "basic banking" and higher profit margins, coupled with the continued benefits from various cost-cutting measures.
BSCH said its pretax profit was 351.6 billion pesetas for the period, up 20% from 292.98 billion pesetas, while net interest income was 837.39 billion pesetas, up 19% from 768.15 billion pesetas a year ago.
BSCH said net commissions rose 12% to 386.82 billion pesetas. The majority of its revenues on commissions came from fund management and credit card interest, the bank said.
BSCH said its cost-cutting program, Programa UNO, is leading to a tighter, streamlined organization and distribution networks, and share costs between its various units. As an example, BSCH said its various banking units now share only two data processing centers.
Since BSCH was created in January this year via the merger of Banco Central Hispano and Banco Santander it has sought to control costs by integrating various software platforms.
BSCH said its resources now total around 3 trillion pesetas.
BSCH said its Latin American operations contributed $464 million to the bank's total net profit. The Spanish bank expects the Latin American operations to contribute $550 million to the group's net profit for the full year.
BSCH said its commercial banking groups contributed 80% of its net profit, with 38% of that related to its business in Spain, 23% in Latin America and 4% in Europe.
BSCH said its total assets rose 3.2% to 40.7 trillion pesetas. |
