Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’ share price sharply up, almost doubles its first-half pretax profit

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, which is currently the largest state-owned bank in the U.K., made an official statement today and announced that its pretax profit over the first six months of the fiscal year almost doubled. The company also revealed that it expects to meet its target of reducing expenses by about 1 billion pounds (1.7 billion dollars) in 2014.

Mr. Ross McEwan, who is the Chief Executive Officer of RBS, said in the statement, which was cited by the Wall Street Journal: “I am very pleased to have had two good quarters. But no one should get ahead of themselves.” As reported by Bloomberg, the Chief Executive Officer of the bank also added: “The results we are posting today show the steady progress we are making as we take the steps to be a much simpler, smaller and fairer bank. These results show that underneath all the noise and huge restructuring of recent years, RBS is a fundamentally stronger bank that can deliver good results for customers and shareholders.”

The share price of the bank jumped by about 15% on Friday, thanks to the fact that the lender posted a large increase in its operating profit over the quarter. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc also shared that it expects its bad-debt impairment charges for 2014 to be lower than initially projected.

Currently, an 81% stake in Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc is still held by the government of the U.K., making the bank the largest state-owned in the country. According to the banks statement, its pre-tax profits for the first half of the year ended June may have increased from 1.37 billion pounds over the same period a year ago to 2.65 billion pounds. RBS also said that its operating profit is expected to have risen from 708 million pounds to 2.6 billion pounds.

One of the analysts, who work at Sanford C. Bernstein – Mr. Chirantan Barua commented on the banks performance for Bloomberg and said: “This was an extremely good set of results.”

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc was adding 11.95% to trade at 368.10 pence per share by 13:12 GMT, marking a one year change of +8.87%. The companys market cap was 37.53 billion pounds as of yesterday. According to the information published on CNN Money, the 23 analysts offering 12-month price targets for Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc have a median target of 320.00, with a high estimate of 445.00 and a low estimate of 210.00. The median estimate represents a -2.68% decrease from the last price of 328.80.