Profit came in at 42.75 billion yuan ($6.03 billion) for January-June, compared to 40.77 billion yuan in the same period a year earlier, the bank said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

That implied a second-quarter net profit of 21.68 billion yuan, 4.83% higher than the year-earlier period, Reuters calculations showed.

Two analysts contacted by Reuters had on average forecast a 4.75% rise in quarterly profit.

The results underline the strength of the country's largest banks which are seeing business rebound even as smaller lenders struggle with growing soured debt and shrinking margins, as a bruising trade war with the United States hurts the economy.

The country's top four lenders - Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd, China Construction Bank Corp, Agricultural Bank of China Ltd and Bank of China Ltd - will report first-half earnings later this week.

BoCom said it had "explored the advantages of wealth management and accelerated the transformation of revenue growth" in the first half, which contributed to its net fee and commission income surging by 9.2% year on year to 23.12 billion yuan.

Net interest income, the major part of bank's income, rose 15.5% to 70.06 billion yuan for the period.

BoCom's net interest margin, the difference between interest paid and earned and a key gauge of profitability for lenders, slightly deteriorated to 1.58% at the end of June, versus 1.59% at the end of March.

Hou Weidong, vice president of BoCom, said at an earnings briefing that "China's commercial banks are facing a great amount of pressure on asset quality", but all such indicators on BoCom are basically stable.

Its non-performing loan ratio stood at 1.47% at the end of June, the same level of three months prior. Outstanding bad loans was up about 3 billion yuan to 75.51 billion yuan during the first six months of 2019.

By the end of the June quarter, the non-performing loan ratio for China's banking sector reached 1.81%, the highest since 2009, recent data from the China Insurance and Banking Regulatory Commission showed.

(Reporting by Engen Tham in Shanghai and Cheng Leng in Beijing; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

By Engen Tham and Cheng Leng