Brazil's Itau posts 15.8% growth in first-quarter profit
Adds quote in paragraph 3, details in paragraph 5
SAO PAULO, May 6 (Reuters) -Brazilian lender Itau Unibanco ITUB4.SA reported on Monday a 15.8% growth in first-quarter net profit, while keeping profitability at high levels and delinquency low.
The country's largest private bank posted recurring net profit of 9.77 billion reais ($1.92 billion) for the quarter ended in March, while analysts polled by LSEG expected 9.73 billion reais.
"The positive scenario in terms of credit quality, due to recent harvests, and the consequent improvement in default rates justify the cost of credit reduction compared to the previous year," Itau said.
Net interest income, a measure of loans minus deposit costs, grew 8.9% from a year earlier to 26.88 billion reais.
Its loan book grew 0.7% from the previous quarter and 2.8% from a year earlier to 1.18 trillion reais, driven mainly by the growth in personal loans.
Itau expects its credit portfolio to increase by 6.5% and 9.5% this year.
During the first quarter, its cost of credit, mainly comprised of provisions for loans likely to default, came in at 8.79 billion reais, or 3.9% less than in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Return on equity, a gauge for profitability, improved by 0.7 percentage points from the previous quarter to 21.9%.
Delinquency, measured by a 90-day default ratio, came in at 2.7%, compared with 2.8% at the end of December.
($1 = 5.0762 reais)
Reporting by Peter Frontini; Editing by Steven Grattan and Stephen Coates
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