Credit Agricole reported a more than twelve fold gain in quarterly profit on Tuesday from a year-ago period depressed by Greece and Italy-related provisions as France's No. 3 bank refocuses on squeezing value out of its home market.
Net income in the three months ended June 30 rose to 696 million euros ($922 million) from 56 million a year earlier, exceeding the 514 million average of estimates in a Thomson Reuters poll of analysts.
Credit Agricole Chief Executive Jean-Paul Chifflet said he expected the bank - which reported a nearly 4 billion euro loss for 2012 on costs related to its exit from Greece and asset writedowns - to deliver a "significantly positive" result for the full year.
In a sign that finding growth in a sluggish French economy remains a challenge, however, the bank reported a 0.9 percent drop in revenue to 4.39 billion euros, compared with a forecast of 4.16 billion.