Banco Santander opened Spain's bank reporting season on Wednesday with a 4 percent rise in its 2016 net profit, as improved results in Brazil helped offset a weak performance in Britain.
Santander, the euro zone's biggest bank by market value, reported net profit for the full year of 6.2 billion euros (5.3 billion pounds), beating the average of analysts' estimates calculated by Thomson Reuters of 6.12 billion euros.
For the fourth quarter, the lender announced a net profit of 1.6 billion euros compared to a tiny profit of 25 million euros in the same quarter last year when its earnings were hit by a 600-million-euro mis-selling compensation bill in Britain.
Unlike most Spanish banks, Santander, along with mid-sized Bankinter which reports its earnings on Thursday, won't be affected by a recent European court ruling that may force other lenders to reimburse customers up to 4 billion euros over mortgages with interest rate floors that were not clearly explained.
Despite falling net profit in Britain, Santander's second biggest market, its operations in its biggest territory Brazil and other Latin American markets helped it endure a squeeze on margins in Europe that is pressuring its banking peers.
In Britain net profit was down almost 15 percent over the year, due mainly to the fall in the value of the sterling, which has sunk to a near three-decade low since Britons voted to leave the European Union last June.
For 2016, net interest income, a measure of earnings on loans minus deposit costs, was 31.1 billion euros, down 3.4 percent from a year ago, mirroring pressure on margins experienced by other Spanish banks. Analysts had expected NII to come in around 30.8 billion euros.
"Going forward, we have many opportunities to grow profitably in Europe and in the Americas, in an environment which we expect will be volatile but in general better than in 2016 in our principal markets," Santander boss Ana Botin said.
Santander reaffirmed on Wednesday its 2018 targets such as boosting its fully-loaded core capital ratio, a closely watched measure of a bank's strength, to just above 11 percent, after it ended the year with a ratio of 10.55 percent.
(Reporting by Jesús Aguado and Angus Berwick; Editing by Stephen Coates)
By Jesús Aguado and Angus Berwick