ZURICH - EFG International on Tuesday reported a 7.6% rise in client inflows for the first four months of the year, beating its own target of a 4-6% rise, as takeover talks with larger Swiss competitor Julius Baer stalled.

The lender, which has hired extensively from Credit Suisse in the wake of the bank's collapse, said inflows reached 3.6 billion Swiss francs ($3.95 billion) for the period.

That topped a forecast from Vontobel analyst Andreas Venditti for 2.5 billion francs of inflows for the period.

The update for January through April, provided for the first time, puts its calendar in sync with Julius Baer, which reported inflows of 1 billion Swiss francs for the same period.

"We have achieved a promising start to the year," Chief Executive Giorgio Pradelli said in a statement.

Analysts welcomed the results.

"EFG's 4M24 trading update is solid and reassures us of EFG's strong growth momentum and outlook," analysts at Citi said.

EFG reported a net profit of 110 million francs for the four-month period without providing a comparative year-earlier figure as it previously reported on a quarterly basis.

For all of 2023, its net profit was 303.2 million francs.

Baer had held talks with EFG about a potential takeover in recent months, but the discussions have stopped, Reuters reported last week.

The two Swiss banks were in talks around the time Julius Baer ousted its Chief Executive Philipp Rickenbacher in February, after losses on loans to failed property firm Signa.

Julius Baer had considered EFG's CEO Giorgio Pradelli as a potential head of a combined entity during the takeover talks.

Asked for comment on the matter on the earnings call, Pradelli said: "We don't comment on market rumors. I have a pretty good job, I think, and we are doing pretty well as you can see."

Strategically, a combination is questionable, RBC analysts wrote in a note to clients after the media reports. Baer has been investing and the additional challenge of integrating EFG would raise questions, they said.

EFG's assets under management rose 11% to 157.5 billion francs from 142.2 billion francs at the end of 2023, more than the 156 billion francs estimated by Vontobel's Venditti.

($1 = 0.9121 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Noele Illien; Editing by Sonali Paul and Bernadette Baum)