“Our third-quarter results bear witness to the strength of BBVA Group’s business model and diversification”
Following the release of BBVA’s Q3-18 earnings, CEO Carlos Torres Vila today said that “our third-quarter results bear witness to the strength of BBVA Group’s business model and diversification.”
Despite challenging conditions in Turkey and Argentina, the Group’s net attributable profit stood at €1.67 billion, including the capital gains on the sale of BBVA Chile and the hyperinflation accounting adjustment in Argentina.
BBVA’s CEO added that the Group’s attributable profit for the first nine months of the year reached €4.32 billion, 25 percent more than in the same period of 2017, 43 percent more excluding currency impacts.
This increase was driven by several factors: the progress made in the transformation process and the advantages of its diversified model “have allowed the bank to once again, and despite a particularly complex environment, to grow our recurring revenues over the course of these nine months by over 10 percent, while expenses growth remained under 3 percent, excluding currency variations,” he said.
Regarding progress in the bank’s transformation, Carlos Torres Vila said that “we are at a watershed moment in the digitization of our business. As of September, unit sales through digital channels accounted for 40 percent of the total”. The Group’s mobile customer base grew 37 percent year-on-year, to 21.7 million customers. “If we look at the whole digital customer base, it already represents 49 percent of the total. In other words, we have virtually met our year-end goal of having half of our customers banking through digital channels,” he added.
The Group’s CEO noted that “on top of these figures, our risk and capital strength indicators remained solid. All these factors are driving profitability and boosting value creation for our shareholders.”
Carlos Torres Vila also referred to the Supreme Court ruling on mortgages. He said that “BBVA has been complying with applicable regulations for more than 20 years. If these regulations change, we will adapt. What can’t be done is applying a change to past events. This is one of the fundamentals of legal security and of the rule of law, which is a guarantee for everyone, citizens and businesses alike.”