October 23 (SeeNews) - The Romanian unit of Austria's Volksbank International on Tuesday reported a gross profit of 16.2 million euro ($23.0 million) through September, up from 10.0 million euro a year earlier, and said it expects its 2007 gross profit to be 68.6% higher than it was last year.
"We see our assets reaching 2.971 billion euro at the end of the year and we expect a gross profit of 23.1 million euro," Volksbank Romania president Gerald Schreiner told a news conference. The bank had a 2006 gross profit of 13.7 million euro, up from 2.94 million euro in the previous year.
Volksbank Romania's total assets rose to 2.723 billion euro at the end of September from 1.022 billion euro a year earlier and 1.38 billion at the end of 2006, Schreiner said.
"Just recently we managed to become the ninth bank in Romania in terms of assets, we surpassed our friends from CEC [Romania's last state-owned commercial bank]. We began the year with a 2.7% market share, which is now 4.0%", Schreiner said.
"In the next three to three-and-a-half years we target to enter the top five," he said and added it was still possible for Volksbank Romania to move to the eighth position in terms of assets among banks in Romania by the end of the current year.
Volksbank Romania (www.volksbank.ro), which became operational in May 2000, had an aggressive expansion of its network which reached 198 outlets (including 75 franchises) at end-September from 95 at the end of last year. The bank plans to reach a total of 225 at the end of 2007 and exceed 400 next year, Gerald Schreiner said.
The bank's loan portfolio rose to 1.796 billion euro at the end of September from 624 million euro a year earlier. Total deposits grew to 452 million euro from 230 million at the end of September 2006.
"We are growing heavily in mortgage lending, 70-80% of our credit portfolio is in this segment, [...] our return-on-equity is approximately 13%," he said.
($ = 0.7036 euro)