BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Bank of Communications Co Ltd, the country’s sixth-largest lender by assets, reported on Friday a 15.1% increase in first-half net profit as the economy recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Profit came in at 42.02 billion yuan ($6.49 billion) for the January to June period compared with 36.5 billion yuan a year earlier, the bank said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange. That was the biggest increase in first-half profit since 2012.
The data implies a second quarter net profit of 20.07 billion yuan, up 33.3% from a year earlier, Reuters calculations show.
($1 = 6.4795 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Cheng Leng, Zhang Yan and Engen Tham; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)