The chief financial officer of HSBC Holdings Plc, has told CNBC he hopes investors will be encouraged by the bank's first-quarter results despite posting a 19 percent fall in pre-tax profit.

The bank beat analysts' expectations when it posted first-quarter results of $5 billion for profit before tax Thursday, ahead of the $4.31 billion predicted by compiled estimates.

"We'd certainly be very pleased if the market looked at these numbers as reasonably encouraging, coming with good momentum out of the fourth quarter of last year into the first of this," Iain Mackay told CNBC Thursday.

The bank's reported revenue came in at $13 billion in the first quarter, 13 percent lower than the same period a year ago.

"This is a good set of results," CEO Stuart Gulliver said in a statement, explaining that reported profits were down due to a change in accounting treatment of the fair value of its own debt. In addition, 2016's first quarter profits included the operating results of a Brazil business that HSBC sold in July last year.