October 28 -- Bank of Communications (BoCom) (601328.SH, 3328.HK) posted a 30.06 percent year-on-year increase in net profit for the first three quarters to 38.42 billion yuan, reports yicai.com, citing a company filing.

Total assets rose 10.39 percent from the beginning of 2011 to 4.36 trillion yuan as of end September.

Through the end of the third quarter, the bank’s balance of loans rose 12.1 percent from the beginning of 2011 to 2.51 trillion yuan, with the deposit balance up 10.31 percent to 3.16 trillion yuan.

Net interest income hit 75.89 billion yuan during the reporting period, up 23.39 percent from the same period a year ago.

The bank’s net interest margin increased 12 percentage points year-on-year to 2.49 percent through the end of September.

BoCom's intermediary business recorded rapid growth during the same period, with a 41.06 percent year-on-year rise in revenue from commissions and fees to 15.04 billion yuan.

Revenue from commissions and fees accounted for 15.97 percent of total income, up 1.93 percentage points year-on-year.

Through the end of September, the provision coverage ratio rose 43.1 percentage points from the beginning of the year to 228.94 percent.

BoCom recorded capital adequacy ratio of 11.89 percent and core capital adequacy ratio of 9.24 percent as of end September.

According to C.F.O. and vice chairman, Yu Yali, BoCom recorded new deposits of 300 billion yuan during the first three quarters, with deposit growth relatively faster in the first half of 2011. Yu attributed this to the lower liquidity resulting from the tight monetary policies.

Through the end of September, loans extended to local government financing platforms were down by 50.8 billion yuan from the end of June to 257.4 billion yuan, according to vice chairman Qian Wenhui.

The non-performing loan ratio of such loans was 0.18 percent, significantly below the industry average, said Qian.

It was reported that the majority of the loans were granted to the infrastructure construction sector, and the bank did not lend to industries which wre highly pollutive, consume a lot of energy, and those which suffer from overcapacity.

BoCom is in talks with the regulators to become one of the first banks to issue bonds for lending to small and micro enterprises, added Qian.

Shares of BoCom were up 1.05 percent to trade at 4.8 yuan per share at 9:42 today.