TOKYO, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Mizuho Financial Group, Japan's second-biggest bank by assets, said on Friday its first-half net profit nearly quadrupled, boosted by bond trading gains and lower bad-loan costs, and raised its full-year outlook.
Mizuho is the first of Japan's top-three banks to report April-September results. They have all been expected to report strong profit growth, but face dim longer-term prospects due to anaemic loan demand amid a slow economic recovery.
The bank said its first-half net profit totalled 341.8 billion yen ($4.2 billion), up from 87.8 billion yen a year earlier, after a jump in profits from trading in Japanese government bonds and a substantial fall in credit costs thanks to fewer bankruptcies.
Mizuho raised its outlook to a net profit of 500 billion yen for the year to March, from 430 billion yen previously and above an average estimate of 420 billion yen in a poll of 14 analysts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Before the announcement, shares of Mizuho ended down 2.3 percent, against a 1.4 percent fall in the benchmark Nikkei average. (Reporting by Taiga Uranaka; Editing by Lincoln Feast)