AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Dutch bank ABN Amro on Wednesday beat analyst expectations with a 77% jump in first-quarter net profit to 523 million euros ($576 million), helped by rising interest rates and lower costs.
Analysts in a company-compiled poll on average had predicted a net profit of 370 million euros for the first three months of 2023, up from 295 million euros a year before.
Improving deposit margins drove net interest income up 24% to 1.6 billion euros, while impairments for bad loans fell to 14 million euros as economic growth in the Netherlands remained strong despite surging inflation.
Total costs dropped 2.5%, partly because the lender cut back on external staff. ABN maintained its expectation that operating expenses will fall by roughly the same rate over the whole of 2023, bringing them down to around 5.3 billion euros.
Largely state-owned ABN, one of three dominant banks in the Netherlands, has refocused its operations and orientation on the Dutch market in recent years, cutting thousands of jobs in the process.
The lender was re-privatised in 2015, following a bailout during the 2008 financial crisis, but the Dutch state has held a majority stake since then.
In a first move to sell shares since 2017, the state in February said it intended to reduce its stake from 56% to just under half. It has not given an update on the share sale plan since then.
($1 = 0.9084 euros)
(Reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by Tom Hogue and Sonali Paul)
