Mediobanca Quarterly Profit Rises 57% on Gain From Asset Sale

Mediobanca SpA (MB), Italy’s biggest publicly traded investment bank, said fiscal first-quarter profit rose 57 percent, boosted by the sale of a stake in Telecom Italia SpA. (TIT)

Net income rose to 171.2 million euros ($236.4 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30 from 109 million euros a year earlier, the Milan-based bank said in a statement today. Earnings include a 58.8 million-euro gain from the sale of part of its holding in Telco SpA, the vehicle that controls Telecom Italia, the country’s biggest phone company.

Chief Executive Officer Alberto Nagel is planning to sell stakes in companies including Assicurazioni Generali SpA (G) and RCS Mediagroup SpA (RCS) to boost profit. The firm will focus on its main business and forecasts revenue from banking activities of 2.1 billion euros by 2016 under a three-year plan announced in June.

“The transformation story and market positioning are unique in the Italian banking space,” Azzurra Guelfi, a London-based analyst at Citigroup, wrote in a note on Oct. 23. “We see management’s strategy as ideal for the company’s development.”

Revenue in the quarter fell to 416.3 million euros from 453.4 million euros a year earlier on lower income from fees and trading. Mediobanca’s loan-loss provisions increased to 128.9 million euros in the quarter from 111.4 million euros a year ago, and operating costs fell 2.9 percent to 168.6 million euros.

The core Tier 1 capital ratio, a key measure of financial strength, fell to 11.5 percent as of Sept. 30 from 11.7 percent at the end of June, Mediobanca said.

Mediobanca rose as much as 3.2 percent to 6.53 euros in Milan after the earnings report.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Frank Connelly at fconnelly@bloomberg.net