SEOUL: Woori Bank, the country’s third-largest lender, said Thursday that its third-quarter net profit soared 78.6 percent from a year earlier on a steep drop in bad loan expenses.
Consolidated net profit reached 323.3 billion won (US$283 million) in the July-September period, compared with 181 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.
The bank set aside 234.6 billion won for bad loan provisions during the three-month period, down sharply from 712 billion won a year earlier. Its net interest profit reached 1.2 trillion won in the third quarter, up from 1.1 trillion won a year earlier. Its profit from commission and fees also rose to 247 billion won from 229 billion won.
In the first three quarters of this year, Woori’s cumulative net profit came to 840.2 billion won, up 40.4 percent from the same period a year earlier. Woori Bank’s assets totaled 297.1 trillion won as of the end of September, up from 286.9 trillion won three months earlier. Woori Bank absorbed its former holding company, Woori Finance Holdings Co., in November last year as part of a government-led privatization plan.
Shares of Woori Bank closed at 9,750 won on the Seoul bourse, down 0.61 percent from the previous session, with the benchmark KOSPI slipping 0.41 percent. The quarterly earnings report was released after the stock market closed.
