BBVA Q1 profits down 12.6% amid provisions

The second biggest Spanish bank BBVA said Wednesday that its first quarter profit fell 12.6 percent to one billion euros ($1.3 billion) amid provisions to meet criteria on cleaning up bad property loans. The results beat the 912 million in profits forecast by analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires and sent the bank's stocks up 2.06 percent to 5.256 euros as the Mardir stock market opened. On April 17, Spain's central bank approved a plan that requires banks to allocate 29 billion euros to bad loan provisions and 15.6 billion euros to raise the proportion of rock-solid core capital. BBVA said its provisions for loan losses and real estate were stable at 1.3 billion euros during the quarter. Its net interest income -- a measures of its basic banking business, rose meanwhile by 13.3 percent to 3.6 billion euros. The bank's businesses in the emerging markets, which helped it to absorb losses incurred when the property bubble burst in 2008, are also making up for weaker demand in the domestic Spanish market. While the domestic contribution to BBVA's results was down 52.2 percent at 229 million euros, the net attributable profit of its Eurasia businesses, including investments in China Citic Bank and Turkey's Garanti, were up 51.7 percent to 299 million euros.