The 39% state-owned bank reported just £208m of profits in the same period last year.
It also reduced its costs by 6%, while impairment costs, those set aside to fund bad loans, have fallen by 40% in the past 12 months.
Further, the bank is not required to add to the £6.8bn it has set aside to cover costs of the PPI scandal.
Winners and losers?
Lloyds Banking Group is the largest holding in Steve Davies’ Jupiter Undervalued Assets Fund, at 6.45%. The fund also has significant holdings in Barclays (5.94%) and HSBC (4.98%).
Sanjeev Shah’s Fidelity Special Situations Fund, meanwhile, has 6.4% of its assets invested in Lloyds stock, its second greatest weighting after HSBC (8.6%).
The share price has increased around 70% in the past 12 months, although at around 55p per share it remains below the 61p widely considered to be needed before the government looks for a sale back to the private sector.
Undeterred
The bank also announced it is to push ahead with plans to sell off branches despite the collapse of a deal with the Co-op last week.
Project Verde will see the bank offload more than 630 branches as a stand-alone bank via a stock market listing in 2014.
Other banks have had mixed fortunes in the first quarter of the year. Last week Santander UK announced a significant increase in profits compared to Q4, but a year-on-year decline, while Barclays reported a 25% profit slump compared the Q4 2012.
