By Mateusz Rabiega
GDANSK (Reuters) -Polish bank Pekao reported a fourth-quarter profit on Thursday that beat estimates, but some analysts signalled that the quality of the beat was not impressive, sending the company’s shares down 2%.
For the quarter the bank reported a net profit of 886.1 million zlotys ($201.88 million), compared with estimates of 735 million zlotys, according to a Reuters poll.
“On the one hand, net profit is higher than expected, but this is due to lower risk provisioning, a stronger trading income and a smaller negative impact from one-offs announced earlier … the quality of the beat is not impressive,” Erste Group analyst Lukasz Janczak said.
Pekao also reported a full-year net profit that fell 21% to 1.72 billion zlotys, hurt by a payments holiday scheme and provisions for Swiss franc mortgages.
The Polish government introduced payment holidays for borrowers that allow eight instalments to be postponed in 2022-23, after a series of interest rate hikes, imposed by the central bank to tackle inflation, hit many borrowers.
Pekao said in January it updated estimates of participation in the payment holidays scheme, which improved its net interest income in the fourth quarter by 460 million zlotys.
The company’s results were impacted by regulatory decisions and booking of additional, significant provisions for mortgages in Swiss franc, the bank’s Chief Executive Leszek Skiba said.
For the full year, Pekao took a 2-billion-zloty cost related to payment holidays and 1.6 billion zlotys worth of provisions for Swiss franc mortgages.
Broader European markets were also lower ahead of a key inflation reading later in the day.
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Pekao’s shares were trading at 87.94 zlotys.
($1 = 4.3893 zlotys)
(Reporting by Mateusz Rabiega and Adrianna Ebert; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Kim Coghill and Shounak Dasgupta)
