JPMorgan Chase & Co. said its profits decreased 50 percent in the first quarter, meeting analysts’ estimates, after $5.1 billion of write-downs and provisions linked to home-equity loans, financing for leveraged buyouts and subprime mortgages, Bloomberg reported.

First-quarter net income dropped to $2.37 billion, or 68 cents a share, from $4.79 billion, or $1.34 per share, a year earlier, the New York-based bank said today. JPMorgan’s stock price rose as much as 5.4 percent in New York trading as CEO Jamie Dimon said the credit-market crisis is almost over.

JPMorgan, which has posted approximately $10 billion of write-downs and losses since the beginning of last year, is now fighting with a slowing labor market that has hurt clients’ ability to pay credit cards bills and consumer loans on time. The company set aside $1.1 billion in the first three months of 2008 for future home-equity loan defaults, after increasing those provisions by $395 million in the fourth quarter.

Revenues fell 11 percent to $16.9 billion, compared with the average estimate of $16.8 billion among analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Return on equity was at 8 percent, compared with 17 percent a year earlier. Earnings matched the average estimate of 15 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, and beat Thomson Financial’s survey by 4 cents a share.