Brazilian lender Itau Unibanco’s second-quarter profit jumps 15%

SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Brazil’s Itau Unibanco, Latin America’s largest private lender by total assets, on Tuesday posted a 15.2% increase in its second-quarter net recurring profit compared to a year earlier.

Itau posted a 10.07 billion reais net recurring profit ($1.8 billion) for the quarter ended in June, a touch over the 9.99 billion reais estimated by analysts polled by LSEG.

Return on equity, a gauge for profitability, stood at 22.4%, up from the 20.9% a year earlier.

Itau main rivals Bradesco and Santander (BME:) Brasil have already published results, both with net income above market expectations.

Itau, which in the last two years has cut part of its credit portfolio to protect itself against highly-indebted customers, reported an over 90 days’ delinquency of 2.7%, in line with the previous quarter and 0.3 percentage below year-on-year.

Its credit portfolio rose almost 6% quarter-on-quarter to 1.25 trillion reais.

($1 = 5.6572 reais)