US banking giant J.P. Morgan Chase announced on Thursday a net profit of 2.1 billion dollars for the first quarter of 2009, beating expectations like peer Goldman Sachs earlier this week. "The firm earned more than two billion dollars this quarter, despite extremely high credit costs," chief executive Jamie Dimon said in a statement.
The figure was slightly down from 2008 figures for the same period, but was better than most market analysts had predicted. The group reported profit per share of 40 cents, higher than the 32 cents per share expected by analysts, with sales up 50 percent to 26.92 billion dollars.
Fellow US bank Goldman Sachs has already announced positive results, leading some to speculate that the worst of the financial crisis is over and spurring a giant rally in financial stocks in recent weeks. Citigroup is to reveal its first-quarter figures on Friday.
Dimon noted that J.P. Morgan had suffered extremely high credit costs, especially in its card-services and retail financial services divisions. "It is reasonable to expect additional increases to credit reserves if the economic environment worsens," but the company was confident that it would be able to ride out a worsening economy.
In the group's investment banking business, revenue more than doubled and it made a 1.61-billion-dollar profit owing to record results on trading operations. J.P. Morgan became the biggest US deposit holder following its acquisition of Washington Mutual for 1.9 billion dollars amid the financial crisis last September.
On Monday, fellow Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs took markets by surprise, announcing forecast-busting quarterly earnings and a massive five-billion-dollar share issue to help repay government aid. Goldman Sachs reported first-quarter net profit of 1.81 billion dollars with earnings per share of 3.39 dollars, sharply higher than 1.33 dollars per share forecast by most analysts.
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