By Pierre Bertrand

Credit Agricole raised its dividend after exceeding its medium-term growth target a year ahead of schedule.

The French lender said underlying profit last year surged to 7.17 billion euros ($7.44 billion) as it beat the financial targets it had set out for 2025 at its investor day in 2022. Credit Agricole targeted reaching more than 6 billion euros in underlying profit this year.

The full-year result was helped by a fourth-quarter performance that beat analysts' expectations. Net profit rose to 1.69 billion euros from 1.33 billion euros a year prior on revenue that surged 17% to 7.09 billion euros. Analysts had expected net profit of 1.36 billion euros on 6.58 billion euros of revenue, according to Visible Alpha consensus.

The bank said it would propose a dividend of 1.10 euros a share for the year, a 5% increase from 2023.

Credit Agricole said its results reflected the performance of its retail-banking and consumer-finance activities. Home-loan activity in France rose 18%, while its insurance business posted record premium income for the fourth quarter, it said.

Revenue at its corporate and investment banking business rose 7.7% to its highest ever fourth-quarter level.

Assets under management at the bank's asset gathering division rose 2.1% in the quarter, driven by strong net inflows. Managed assets by Credit Agricole's Amundi reached a new record of 2.24 billion euros at the end of December, after more than 20.5 billion euros in net inflows in the quarter, the highest since 2021.

Credit Agricole said its underlying cost-income ratio for 2024 improved by 1 percentage point to 54.4%.

Its common Tier 1 equity ratio--a measure of balance-sheet strength--stood at 11.7% at the end of 2024.

Write to Pierre Bertrand at pierre.bertrand@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 05, 2025 04:21 ET (09:21 GMT)

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