SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Banco do Brasil has made an extraordinary provision of 788 million reais to cover half of the bank’s exposure to a company that filed for bankruptcy in January.
Banks have avoided mentioning the company by name, although it is widely known in the market that it is Americanas, whose crisis weighed on the results of all the country’s large banks.
Banco do Brasil’s total provision for expected losses on defaults jumped 72.4% in the fourth quarter year-on-year to 6.53 billion reais. But that did not prevent BB from registering a recurring profit of 9.04 billion reais in the period, a result, a jump of 52.4% over the same stage of 2021 and well above the average estimate of analysts consulted by Refinitiv, of 8. 07 billion reais.
The adjusted return on equity of the bank increased from 16.3% to 22.7% year-on-year.
BB’s credit portfolio closed last year at 1 trillion reais, with growth of 14.8% in the year.
However, the default rate over 90 days rose from 1.75% to 2.51% in 12 months.
The bank controlled by the federal government projected for 2023 a growth of 8% to 12% of its credit portfolio, expenses with provisions for defaults of 19 billion to 23 billion reais and an adjusted profit of 33 billion to 37 billion reais.
(By Aluísio Alves)
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