Millennium upbeat

Millennium bank reported upbeat 2006 results last week, sending its stock as much as six-percent higher, despite a lower net profit last year due to a one-off asset gain a year earlier.

Excluding the effect of a sale of shares in local insurer PZU in 2005, the bank said net profit rose 44 percent year-on-year to zł.301 million.

"The results are better than the market expected," said Bank Zachodni WBK analyst Marek Juras. "The bank had very strong net interest and commission incomes. In general, revenues were much higher than expected."

Shares in Millennium, majority-owned by Portugal's biggest listed bank, Millennium BCP, almost doubled in value in the last year as strong economic growth drove company profits higher and foreign money flowed onto the Warsaw bourse.

Millennium said it would pay out 48 percent of last year's net profit, or zł.0.17 per share, as a dividend.

The bank, the first of Poland's major listed lenders to report, and thus seen as a bellwether for the sector, said its return on equity rose to 13.6 percent from 10.5 percent, just short of the 15-percent target set by management a year earlier. Its total loans rose 56 percent to zł.14.94 billion. Net interest income rose to zł.681 million from zł.620.1 million, up 9.8 percent.

Millennium has 360 local branches and the firm said it planned to invest around zł.91 million this year in adding a further 81 branches.

"In 2007-2008 we want to attain a 12-percent share in the home-loan market and five-percent share in the fund-management sector," management board member Fernando Bicho told a news conference.

Its home-loan issuance soared 117 percent to zł.7.6 billion on a sector booming thanks to low interest rates and rising incomes. (Reuters)