China Citic Bank Corp's profit fell 22.8 per cent in the first quarter, hit by a sharp contraction in margins after several interest rate cuts.
The nation's seventh-largest lender announced yesterday net income totalled 3.24 billion yuan (HK$3.68 billion) or 8 fen per share in the first three months, compared with 4.2 billion yuan a year earlier.
'Although there are many difficulties, I'm still optimistic about our earnings outlook. The core aim is to beat the general market,' chief executive Chen Xiaoxian said on Wednesday after the company announced the full-year results for last year.
The quarterly profit decline was the second-worst among 14 publicly listed mainland lenders, whose earnings on average fell 5.95 per cent.
Citic Bank's net interest income fell 18 per cent to 7.23 billion yuan in the quarter, with net interest margin shrinking to 2.52 per cent from 3.33 per cent last year after the central bank cut rates five times since September last year.
Net fee and commission income surged 24 per cent to 738 million yuan but accounted for only 8.87 per cent of bank's 8.32 billion yuan operating income.
