KB Financial Q3 net rises over 6-fold

SEOUL, Oct. 28 (Yonhap) -- KB Financial Group Inc., South Korea's No. 2 banking group, said Friday its third-quarter earnings jumped more than six-fold on higher interest income and smaller loan-loss provision.
Net profit came to 579 billion won (US$524 million) in the July-September period, compared with 90.6 billion won a year earlier, the group said in a regulatory filing.
Revenue rose 28 percent on-year to 7.55 trillion won and operating profit jumped more than tripled to 780 billion won, it added.
The group's net interest margin, a key barometer of profitability, reached 3.07 percent as of the end of September, up from 2.62 percent a year earlier.
Shares of KB Financial closed at 45,000 won on the main bourse, up 4.17 percent from Thursday's close. The third-quarter business results came out after the market closed.
Kookmin Bank, the flagship unit of the group, logged a net profit of 316.2 billion won during the last quarter, up 251 percent from a year ago.
The group's total assets reached 363.6 trillion won as of the end of September, up 30.2 trillion won from the end of last year.