BPI shares gain 7% as bank goes into profit

Portuguese bank BPI saw its shares gain 7% to €1.24 per share after the bank reported profits of €210 million in Q1. The bank, headed by Pablo Forero, is seeing its shares trading at their highest since 16 February.

 

By close of trade on Monday 61,000 shares had changed hands in an amount that compares with the daily average over the past six months which stood at around 122,000. On Friday more than 43,000 shares were bought and sold.

Since the start of 2018, BPI has increased its value on the stock market by 3.32% with a stock market capitalisation worth around €1.77Bn.

By this week BPI announced profits of €210Bn between January and March 2018, representing a clear improvement against the losses of €122.3 million registered for the same period in 2017.

BPI (Banco Português de Investimento) is a major privately-owned bank in Portugal owned by the Spanish bank La Caixa. It runs the banking business with companies, institutional and private clients. The bank was founded in 1981 by Artur Santos Silva and is the third largest private Portuguese financial group with assets of €112.9Bn (2009) and has more than 1.4 million customers, 674 branches and 30 investment centres.

Based in Porto, the group has undergone restructuring changes following the banking crisis in the country between 2008 and 2015 by closing unprofitable branches. By the end of  2017, BPI had 431 branches in Portugal, 14 less than in 2016.