Sberbank does not see potential problems related to Agrokor in its balance sheet

Sberbank currently does not see potential problems with its balance sheet that would be related to issues at Agrokor, said Sberbank’s Chief Financial Officer Aleksandar Morozov during a teleconference with analysts, as reported by Reuters’ Moscow office.

Earlier, VTB analysts warned that Sberbank’s cost of risk in 2017 rose to 149 basis points, up from 122 basis points in 2016, mainly due to “one-off events,” namely Agrokor’s problems and changes in the model for estimating losses on corporate loans.

>>>Sberbank increased profit by a fifth in the last quarter of 2017.

Russian Sberbank recently announced that it achieved a net profit of 172.4 billion rubles (2.5 billion euros) in the last quarter of the previous year, which is 22 percent higher than what they recorded in the same period a year earlier.

The total revenues of the bank increased by 13.4 percent, to 501.4 billion rubles. The bank also recorded a 21 percent increase in net provisions for loan write-offs in the fourth quarter, amounting to 73.2 billion rubles, indicating a change in the calculation methodology.

>>>HANFA: The management of Agrokor’s companies has long ceased to be masters of their own fate.

Throughout the previous year, the bank’s net profit jumped by 38 percent, to 748.7 billion rubles. At the same time, the share of non-performing loans in the loan portfolio at the end of the previous year was 4.2 percent, down by 0.2 percentage points compared to the end of 2016. The share of restructured loans in the gross loan portfolio slipped by 0.6 percentage points, to 5.9 percent.