Spain's BBVA reports 3.45 bln euro profits in first 9 months of 2017

MADRID, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- Spain's second-biggest bank BBVA reported 3.45 billion euro (4.3 billion US dollars) of profits in the first nine months of 2017, the bank reported on Thursday.

The Bank highlighted that the figure is "nearly equal to its profit for the whole 2016", and meant a 23.3 percent increase when compared to the same period of 2016.

According to the bank, the main factors driving this growth were "a solid performance in terms of recurring income, cost containment and a drop in impairment losses on financial assets".

The bank's non-performing loan rate reached 4.5 percent in September, as opposed to the 4.8 percent of June, reaching its lowest level in the past five years.

The bank's CEO, Carlos Torres Vila, stated that BBVA kept "posting solid, recurring and sustainable results", and pointed out that they were seeing the results of the bank's transformation with new banking features having a positive impact on customer's lives.

In this sense, the digital customer base increased by 24 percent year-on-year to 21.1 million in September, the bank stated, highlighting that "of these, the number of customers banking with their smartphone surged 43 percent to 15.8 million". (1 euro=1.24 U.S. dollars) Enditem