.Popular posts profit on sale of unit
Puerto Rican bank Popular posts profit with sale of stake in technology unit Evertec

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Companies:Popular Inc..Related Quotes
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BPOP 2.8500 0.0000


{"s" : "bpop","k" : "a00,a50,b00,b60,c10,g00,h00,l10,p20,t10,v00","o" : "","j" : ""} On Friday October 22, 2010, 4:41 pm EDT
NEW YORK (AP) -- Popular Inc., a bank based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with operations in the U.S., said Friday that the sale of it's a stake in technology unit pushed its results into the black for the third quarter.

For the three months that ended Sept. 30, the company earned $494.5 million, or 48 cents per share. That compared with $595.6 million, or $1.41 per share, a year earlier.

On average, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, who typically exclude one-time items like selling a unit, expected a loss of 2 cents per share on revenue of $504.4 million.

Shares of Popular rose 15 cents, more than 5 percent, to close Friday at $2.85.

The results in the latest quarter included a $531 million after-tax gain on the sale of a 51 percent interest in the company's information technology unit, Evertec. The quarterly results a year earlier were lifted by $715.7 million from share offerings.

The company noted that net interest income in the latest quarter included a $78.5 million discount accretion on loans acquired from Westernbank through the FDIC.

Popular's provision for loan losses was $215 million for the quarter, down from $331.1 million a year earlier but up from the $202.3 million in the previous quarter. Net charge-offs were $248 million, down from $269.9 million a year earlier but up from the $202.3 million in the previous quarter.

CEO Richard Carrion said the company will focus on improving credit quality of its Puerto Rican loan portfolios