ABN Amro's $290 million buyback plan lags market view, knocking shares

By Mateusz Rabiega and Jakob Van Calster

(Reuters) -Dutch bank ABN Amro reported a mixed set of results and announced a share buyback of up to 250 million euros ($289 million) on Wednesday, clearly lower than what analysts had forecasted for 2025, sending its shares falling 7%.

ABN will assess in the fourth quarter if it has room for further repurchases, CEO Marguerite Bérard said in a statement. Analysts on average had expected it to spend 517 million euros on buybacks this year.

J.P. Morgan said the bank has amassed a strong distributable capital buffer that had supported market expectations for higher returns.

ABN's net interest income fell 5% to 1.53 billion euros in the second quarter, narrowly missing analysts' expectations, as lower interest rates kept pressuring revenue.

Quarterly profit was 606 million euros, ahead of the 583 million estimated by analysts polled by the lender, supported by lower than expected impairment charges.

Wednesday's decline dented the stock's strong run so far this year, bringing the lender's yearly gains to 55%.

Operating expenses rose 4% on the year, mainly reflecting employment costs and salary related expenses.

"The impact of our cost discipline, including tighter controls on hiring external staff, started to become visible this quarter," Berard said in the press release.

However, personnel costs rose 12% from last year and by 1% from the first quarter of 2025, as the bank tries to balance the headcount of internal workers while slimming down its external workforce. 

Analysts expect ABN's operating expenses to rise to 5.6 billion euros in 2025 and to 5.7 billion a year later, in contrast with the bank's reiterated cost target of 5.3-5.4 billion euros.

"We announced our hiring freeze in April because costs were developing in the wrong direction," a company spokesperson told Reuters, adding ABN's underlying costs were down by 1.3% from the prior quarter and remained under control.

($1 = 0.8642 euros)

(Reporting by Mateusz Rabiega and Jakob Van Calster in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak and Matt Scuffham)