HONG KONG/BEIJING, April 27 (Reuters) - - Agricultural Bank of China Ltd , China's third-largest bank by assets, said on Wednesday that its first-quarter net profit rose 36.4 percent on increased margins in the wake of four interest rate increases since October.
AgBank recorded a 34.067 billion yuan ($5.2 billion) profit for the January-March quarter, up from 24.97 billion yuan a year earlier. The bank beat an average estimate of 33.36 billion yuan from seven banking analysts surveyed by Reuters.
AgBank did not report its earnings a year ago, but published them retroactively after going public last August in what at the time was the world's biggest-ever IPO. (Reporting by Kelvin Soh and Terril Yue Jones; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Chris Lewis)