{"id":43439,"date":"2015-02-25T00:52:01","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T16:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=43439"},"modified":"2015-02-25T00:52:01","modified_gmt":"2015-02-24T16:52:01","slug":"bank-of-montreals-first-quarter-profit-falls-as-consumer-borrowing-wanes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/02\/25\/bank-of-montreals-first-quarter-profit-falls-as-consumer-borrowing-wanes\/","title":{"rendered":"Bank of Montreal’s first quarter profit falls as consumer borrowing wanes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bank<\/a>
Bank of Montreal (Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO \u2014 Bank of Montreal saw its first-quarter profit shrink from a year ago, amid a challenging interest rate environment and signs that Canadians’ appetites for debt are waning.<\/p>\n

The bank said Tuesday it earned $1 billion or $1.46 per share for the quarter ended Jan. 31 compared with a profit of $1.06 billion or $1.58 per share a year ago.<\/p>\n

Revenue grew to $5.06 billion, up from $4.48 billion.<\/p>\n

On an adjusted basis, BMO said it earned $1.04 billion or $1.53 per share for the quarter, down from $1.08 billion or $1.161 per share a year ago.<\/p>\n

Analysts had expected an adjusted profit of $1.63 per share.<\/p>\n

BMO said the lower adjusted profit was due to the impact of falling long-term interest rates on its insurance business, which the bank said reduced its adjusted earnings by six cents per share.<\/p>\n

“BMO’s first-quarter results reflect the impact of an unsettled environment in which we saw significant movements in oil prices, long-term interest rates and the Canadian dollar,” CEO Bill Downe said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The country’s biggest banks are facing a slew of headwinds lately. The recent plunge in the price of oil is expected to hurt investment banking revenues and eventually lead to loan losses. Meanwhile, debt-strapped Canadians have become reluctant to borrow, causing growth in the banks’ domestic retail operations to slow.<\/p>\n

Barclays analyst John Aiken said BMO enjoyed “exceptionally strong growth” in the U.S., which offset lacklustre growth in its Canadian retail banking branch.<\/p>\n

Its Canadian banking arm earned a profit of $502 million, up $17 million from a year ago, due to higher revenue and lower provisions for credit losses.<\/p>\n

BMO’s U.S. banking business earned $192 million, up $25 million from a year ago.<\/p>\n

BMO Capital Markets earned $221 million, down from $276 million a year ago. Meanwhile, its wealth management operations earned $159 million, down from $174 million a year ago due to the change in interest rates.<\/p>\n

Aiken said the bank’s strong wealth management results were overshadowed by the impact of lower interest rates on the insurance business.<\/p>\n

“This will likely be a consistent theme throughout the quarter, with strong traditional wealth management results but potential headwinds from insurance,” Aiken said in a note to clients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2014 Bank of Montreal saw its first-quarter profit shrink from a year ago, amid a challenging interest rate environment …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":43464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","category-news-ca","mauthors-alexandra-posadzki","mauthors-the-canadian-press1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}