MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico's Grupo Financiero Banorte on Thursday raised its forecast for its 2022 full-year net profit by around 8% after a surge in third-quarter earnings.
The bank said in a statement it now expects an annual net profit of 44-45.4 billion pesos, up from the 40.5-42 billion pesos previously forecast.
Banorte earlier reported earlier that third-quarter net profit rose 30% to 11.54 billion pesos ($573.6 million) from the year-ago period, boosted by growth across its insurance, brokerage and banking units. The result beat a Refinitiv forecast of 11.44 billion pesos.
Revenue for the group, which owns one of the country's largest banks and pension funds, totaled 29.91 billion pesos in the third quarter, up 24% from a year earlier, ahead of the Refinitiv forecast of 29.6 billion pesos.
The bank said it has maintained expense controls despite inflationary pressures, adding that "sound levels of loan loss provisions and strong capital ratios" would help to shield its balance sheet for the rest of 2022 and 2023.
Citi analysts said in a report that Banorte's previous guidance was "conservative", and the current guidance better reflected "the bank's positive prospects."
"We expect higher interest rates to continue to be a positive tailwind for the bank, positively impacting the stock," it added.
Banorte also updated its projection for 2022 expenses growth, which it put at 7.9%-8.4% from 7.0%-7.6% previously.
($1 = 20.1271 pesos by end-September)