SAO PAULO, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Brazilian lender Itau Unibanco reported on Monday a 11.9% increase in its third-quarter profit, coming in just above analyst expectations in part due to solid loan growth.
Latin America's largest private bank posted recurring net profit during the July-to-September period of 9.04 billion reais ($1.85 billion), while analysts polled by LSEG expected 8.95 billion reais.
Its loan book grew about 5% from the previous year and by 1% compared to the second quarter, reaching 1.16 trillion reais. This prompted a 9.3% expansion of Itau's net interest income from clients to 25.56 billion reais.
The bank's 90-day delinquency ratio came in at 3.0%, flat from the previous quarter.
During the third quarter, Itau set aside 9.2 billion reais for loans likely to default, around 4% less than in the previous quarter.
Return on equity, a gauge of profitability, grew 0.1 percentage point from the previous quarter to settle at 21.1%. ($1 = 4.8853 reais) (Reporting by Peter Frontini; Editing by David Alire Garcia)
