Bank of America Posts $2.5 Billion Profit, Helped by Cost Cuts Bank of America swung to a profit in the second quarter, helped by lower expenses and better results in its mortgage business. The bank, the second-largest in the United States after JPMorgan Chase, said on Wednesday that it had earned $2.5 billion, or 19 cents a share, exceeding analyst estimates. Revenue came in at $22.2 billion, slightly below projections. Analysts had been expecting the company to earn 14 cents a share on revenue of $22.9 billion. Still, the figures for the second quarter stand in sharp contrast to Bank of America's results in the period a year earlier, when huge mortgage-related charges contributed to a loss of $8.8 billion, or 90 cents a share. Bank of America's results this quarter were more straightforward than in recent quarters, when one-time gains and losses made it difficult to gauge the bank's underlying performance. Shrinking revenues are requiring banks to cut costs to increase profits, and Bank of America said expenses declined to $17 billion from $22.9 billion in the second quarter of 2011. It also said it expected to save an additional $3 billion annually by mid-2015 as it continued a restructuring initiative. The company's cost-cutting efforts were evident in its head count, which dropped by more 3,200 in the second quarter. "Once again, we had strong capital generation this quarter through a combination of earnings growth and a reduction in risk-weighted assets," the bank's chief financial officer, Bruce R. Thompson, said in a statement.