Greek shipping lender Alpha Bank is pressing ahead with huge disposals of bad loans as impairments fell in the first quarter.
The bank said impairment losses on loans were "significantly reduced" to EUR 178.3m ($199m) to 31 March, from EUR 335.8m last year.
This implies a cost of risk of 1.4%, compared to an average of 3% in 2018, it added.
"Asset quality continued to improve with non-performing exposure (NPE) balances for the group reduced by EUR 0.3bn in first quarter 2019," it said.
Deals to offload EUR 4bn of non-performing loans (NPL) will be carried out before the end of the year, as planned, Alpha Bank added.
This will include selling a portfolio of Greek SMEs (Project Neptune), as well as the disposal of a portfolio of mainly mortgage loans, Project Orion.
New lending to the private sector in Greece totalled EUR 600m in the first quarter, including to the transport industry.
Operating costs decreased 3.5% year-on-year, mainly driven by lower general expenses.
Cost-containment initiatives are set to further improve efficiencies in 2019, it said.
Net profit was down to EUR 27.5m, from EUR 65.4m a year ago.
"Challenging dynamics"
CEO Vassilios Psaltis said: "Alpha Bank delivered a profitable performance in the first quarter of 2019 despite the challenging dynamics in our loan book given the ongoing deleveraging of our NPE portfolio.
"Attention to cost discipline and a de-escalation in impairment charges helped to offset lower revenues during the quarter."
In its 2018 results, the bank said it was lining up more big disposals of bad loans as impairments rose in 2018 to EUR 1.61bn last year, from EUR 1bn in 2017.
The figure was affected by additional impairments in the final three months in relation to an expanded target for non-performing exposure (NPE) sales this year.
Three transactions of NPE loan disposals totalling EUR 3bn were completed in 2018.
