April 2 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis said the lender may be able to repay some of its federal bailout money after several quarters pass and the economy improves.

The U.S. economy shows signs of bottoming in the second half of 2009 and may rebound early next year, Lewis said today in an interview on CNBC television. He cited U.S. efforts to stimulate growth and repair the financial system.

“We can’t throw as many things as we’ve thrown at it and not break the back of this thing,” Lewis said. As for the federal aid, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank would “like to pay all of that back, and not to have that be an issue.”

Lewis, 61, the CEO since 2001, has been under fire for agreeing to buy mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. and securities brokerage Merrill Lynch & Co. last year while both were on the verge of collapse. Bank of America has received $45 billion of TARP plus a guarantee of $118 billion of its assets. The bank posted a fourth-quarter loss of $1.79 billion, and Lewis has promised a rebound this year with profit that may reach $50 billion before provisions and taxes. He also has vowed the bank won’t need more U.S. aid.

Merrill and Countrywide “will prove to be two of the best acquisitions ever made if you judge us over two or three years instead of two or three months,” Lewis said today.

Timing on TARP

Bank of America closed at $7.05 a share yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange, leaving the stock down 50 percent in 2009 and 83 percent from a year earlier.

Lewis said in March that Bank of America would like to repurchase preferred shares sold to the U.S. government by the end of this year. That comment was made before Lewis and CEOs of other large U.S. banks met with President Barack Obama, who cautioned the executives to retain capital in case the economy worsened, Lewis said today.

“The president said we need to make sure the financial system is in proper shape and we don’t have a head fake.”

Record levels of home refinancing and preliminary signs that late payments on car loans are declining show the economy may be bottoming, Lewis said. More than half of all U.S. households have accounts with Bank of America, which ranks among the largest credit-card, housing, small business and corporate lenders.

“You should see the full earnings power of Bank of America” in 2011, Lewis said. Citing the record profits reported by Countrywide and Merrill Lynch during the housing boom of 2005-2006, Bank of America is poised to report annual after-tax profit of $30 billion within the next few years, he said.

Need For Capital

The bank’s potential isn’t reflected in its current stock price because of “fears of the unknown and how bad this economy is going to get,” Lewis said.

Bank of America won’t need to raise additional capital “under any standard we’ve seen before,” Lewis said. Difficulty in selling shares to the public make it likely the bank will need further government aid, Moody’s Investors Service analyst David Fanger wrote in a March 25 report.

Plans for a new regulator responsible for overseeing systemwide risk are sensible, Lewis said. “The devil is in the details. What powers do they have,” he said, adding that existing regulators are also likely to seek more authority.

Bank of America rose 19 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $7.24 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

To contact the reporter on this story: David Mildenberg in Charlotte at dmildenberg@bloomberg.net; Linda Shen in New York at lshen21@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 2, 2009 16:43 EDT