Hot stock: UOB leads tumble among Singapore banking stocks

UNITED Overseas Bank saw its share price tumble more than 4 per cent on Friday, after it unveiled weaker-than-expected second quarter earnings.

At 10:24am, UOB was trading around S$21.99, down S$0.940, or 4.10 per cent. About 4.82 million shares were traded.

Early Friday, UOB reported that its net profit for the second quarter of 2015 fell 5.7 per cent from a year ago to S$762 million, missing the S$831.4 million average of seven analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The weaker performance was largely due to lower treasury and investment income.

Share prices of its rivals - DBS and OCBC - also eased along with the wider market sentiment, which remained spooked by the Chinese stock market.

DBS was trading around S$20.03, down S$0.68, or 3.28 per cent. About 7.26 million shares changed hands.

OCBC, which had unveiled stronger-than-expected earnings early Friday, was trading around S$10.19 a share, down S$0.080, or 0.78 per cent, on more than 8 million shares.

The bank reported a record net profit of S$1.05 billion for the second quarter of 2015, which was 14 per cent higher than S$921 million a year ago. That beat the average forecast of S$969 million in a Bloomberg survey of eight analysts.