Dutch bank ABN Amro has today beaten analyst expectations with a 77% jump in first-quarter net profit to €523m, helped by rising interest rates and lower costs.
Analysts in a company-compiled poll on average had predicted a net profit of €370m for the first three months of 2023, up from €295m a year before.
Improving deposit margins drove net interest income up 24% to 41.6 billion, while impairments for bad loans fell to €14m 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.
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.
