China Everbright Bank Co., the Chinese lender preparing for an initial public offering, said it earned 3.4 billion yuan ($497 million) in the first half after expanding credit by 32 percent.

Revenue totaled 11.7 billion yuan in the first six months, the Beijing-based company said in a statement on its Web site late yesterday, without giving any comparison figures. Everbright Bank had net income of 6.5 billion yuan in the first half of 2008, according to an earlier statement.

Everbright Bank, the nation’s 11th-largest by assets, raised $1.7 billion last month in a private placement to boost its capital adequacy ratio to above the 10 percent regulatory minimum. The lender, whose public offering in Shanghai has been delayed for more than a year, said in June its capital ratio may have dropped below 9 percent after paying its first dividend in six years.

The company advanced 148 billion yuan of new loans in the first half, taking the total to 616.5 billion yuan as of June 30. Deposits gained 27 percent to 792.1 billion yuan, it said today. Non-performing loans accounted for 1.42 percent of total advances by the end of June, down 0.58 percentage points from a year earlier.

Everbright Bank, which received a 20 billion yuan government cash injection in November 2007, is still awaiting approval for a plan to sell between 10 percent and 20 percent of its equity to the public after submitting a sale document to regulators on June 6, 2008.