BNP Paribas posts net profit of 2.04 billion euros for third quarter, up 8.3 percent from last year

Balint Porneczi | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The logo of BNP Paribas SA sits outside a branch of the bank in Paris, France.

French bank BNP Paribas posted forecast-beating third-quarter earnings Tuesday with net profit seeing an 8 percent rise from the same period last year.

Earnings were boosted by the sale of a stake in Indian life insurance company SBI Life which led to a 326 million euro capital gain for the bank.

However, group revenues at the bank totaled 10.3 billion euros ($11.9 billion), down 1.8 percent year-on-year, due to an unfavorable exchange rate, the bank said. It also reported a weak performance at its corporate and institutional banking (CIB) division against what the bank called “unfavorable” market conditions. There was also a steep drop in revenues at its fixed income division.

The bank’s chief financial officer (CFO) told CNBC that the earnings reflected a challenging environment for certain parts of the bank.

“It’s only the fixed income which has been relatively challenging this quarter,” Lars Machenil said.

“Maybe this challenge came from uncertainty, people waiting to do investments or whatever depending on how things would clarify. So one could assume that now going forward the elements will clarify somewhat and therefore that fixed income will pick up further. So that is what we’ll have to see.”