Starting next week, Canada’s big banks will report multibillion-dollar annual profits that are among their best ever.

It comes against the backdrop of a Canadian economy that has just experienced one of the worst 12-month stretches in its history. But while credit quality has been under stress from the aftermath of the global credit crisis, the banks are expected to add only modest growth in provisions for bad loans.

Analysts say strong capital-markets profits, rising net interest margins and even some domestic loan growth will likely more than offset any damage from expected defaults.

According to analysts’ estimates, the big six Canadian banks will report net earnings for fiscal 2009 of about $15-billion, slightly behind the record haul they reported in fiscal 2007.

The biggest of them all, Royal Bank of Canada, could report net earnings for the year of more than $4-billion -- not bad when the rest of the economy is in the deep-freeze.

UBS analyst Peter Rozenberg predicts the main issue for the banks over the next few years will be what to do with the heap of excess capital they are sitting on, predicting it will grow to $40-billion by 2012.

The money will likely be used to “drive acquisitions, dividends and buy backs, however, we expect banks to remain cautions in the short term due to continued economic and regulatory risk,” he said in a note to clients on Thursday.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Andre Hardy is calling for net earnings growth for the fourth quarter ranging from 15% for CIBC to 29% for National Bank of Canada.

Mr. Hardy’s top picks are National Bank, owing to its almost complete lack of exposure to the U.S. and limited exposure to Ontario’s struggling manufacturing sector.

Despite its focus in Ontario, TD “should continue to outperform its peers in both domestic and U.S. banking,” he said, pointing to recent data is showing that the bank’s U.S. loan losses are better than its competitors.

Of all the players, TD has the biggest retail operation in the U.S.

“Asset and revenue growth in both the Canadian and U.S. banking platforms have been solid and better than peers in recent quarters,” Mr. Hardy said in a research note.

In the wake of the financial crisis the Big Six have benefitted from surprisingly strong trading revenues, but one of the biggest question marks going into the fourth quarter is whether that will continue.

Trading results are “difficult to predict at the best of times, and even more so now following three quarters of very strong performance,” Mr. Hardy said.

With credit markets continuing to normalize after the crisis the big six are benefitting, especially as they move into the space left by the so called shadow banks that disappeared in the credit crunch.

According to Barclays Capital analyst John Aiken, CIBC is the “dark horse” of the fourth quarter after surprising the market with negative credit experience in the third quarter. Mr. Aiken suggested the poor results may have been a blip rather than the start of a new trend, providing “a reasonably solid likelihood that [CIBC] could report lower [credit losses], generating the possibility of a positive surprise.”

In the coming year Mr. Aiken said U.S. exposure will continue to hamper Canadian banks as businesses and consumers struggle through an economy that is significantly more challenged than Canada’s.

“We will be keeping a close eye on Bank of Montreal’s credit trends as well as those of Bank of Nova Scotia, TD and Royal Bank,” he said.

Financial Post

jgreenwood@nationalpost.com