A Smaller Fee Target
Companies in Brazil have been waiting for a calm stretch to sell shares to the public or issue debt.
Itau Unibanco, Latin America's largest bank, says that calm stretch is probably not coming this year.
Volatile markets are the reason.
When markets get jumpy, companies put off selling stock to the public for the first time, a process known as an IPO, and delay bond deals.
Fees that investment funds earn when their investments do well are also expected to come in lighter. Itau says all of these will bring in less than it originally thought.
Renato Lulia, an Itau executive, said he does not expect that window to open anytime soon.
"Given inherent volatility in Brazil and elsewhere and the elections, a good window in the second half of the year is unlikely," he said.
Fees are not pocket change. In 2025, they added up to about 46.9 billion reais ($9.1 billion), or one-quarter of total revenue.
Fee income at Itau includes investment banking, asset management and brokerage revenue. With Brazil's election calendar and volatile markets making issuers cautious, management expects fewer of those deals to close in the second half.
The Lending Side Is Holding Up
The fee squeeze did not stop Itau from posting a solid quarter.
Its return on equity, a measure of profit relative to the money shareholders put in, rose 1 percentage point to 24.3%. That is the best result so far among big diversified Brazilian banks to report earnings.
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Lending is doing the heavy lifting. Its loan portfolio grew 9.6% over the past year, reaching 1.5 trillion reais.
Lulia said a few one-off deals in wholesale banking, the business that serves large companies, drove part of that growth. Underlying demand from big corporate borrowers is declining.
Bad loans are ticking up, but only a little.
Loans overdue by 90 days or more equaled 2.1% of Itau's Brazil portfolio, compared with 2% a year earlier.
CEO Milton Maluhy said he expects late payments by individual borrowers to stay roughly stable even if Brazil's overall credit picture gets worse.
"With the information we have, we foresee a stability on delinquency ratios," he said.
Part of the reason is the customers Itau chose after the pandemic: wealthy individuals and companies with strong credit ratings.
That strategy has helped its loan quality beat many rivals during the Brazilian central bank's rate hikes.
Banco BTG Pactual analyst Eduardo Rosman said rivals may struggle to match the quality of Itau's loans.
"Itau continues to deliver strong asset-quality numbers, and we believe this should be the best asset-quality print among Brazilian banks," he said.
Investors took notice.
What It Means for Your Portfolio
The fee cut tells you how bumpy the markets have been, but Itau is still the most valuable publicly traded financial company in Latin America, worth $96.3 billion.
Its lead over No. 2 Nu Holdings Ltd. has widened since the start of the year.
The bank says the fee cut does not change its profit outlook.
Itau does not publish a target for return on equity, but Lulia said the profit levels implied by its other projections should not shift much.
He also said the tax rate Itau effectively pays should land near the low end of its range.
Analysts see the lending strength as the part to watch. Bloomberg Intelligence's Gabriel Gusan said second-quarter loan growth was strong in corporate lending, payroll loans and mortgages.
He also said the gap between what Itau charges borrowers and what it pays savers stayed broadly stable.
For investors, the report tells a clean story. The part of the bank that depends on markets is having a rough year, and the part that depends on lending is not.
If markets calm down, fee growth could bounce back toward the old target.
If not, Itau still has a strong lending business and a profit engine most rivals would happily take.
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