Toronto stocks got a boost from Royal Bank of Canada on Friday, after the country’s largest bank posted a record quarterly profit. The S&P/TSX composite index rose 83.63 points or 0.9% to close at 9,741.37.

Volume was 314 million shares.

Shares of RBC, the largest component in the benchmark index, jumped $6.14 or 9.16% to $73.14, their biggest gain in more than two years.

The bank said first-quarter net income rose 24.7% to a record, boosted by rising capital markets and a turnaround in its U.S. operations.

Six of the 10 TSX groups ended higher led the financials group, which rose 0.98%.

Toronto-Dominion Bank finished up 0.3%, regaining some of the value it lost on Thursday amid investor disappointment with its new first-quarter earnings report.

Energy stocks soared 2.53%, even as crude oil prices remained above US$51 a barrel.

EnCana rose 3.3% and Western Oil Sands gained 6.9%. Trican Well Service ended the session 2.2% higher.

The materials group advanced 0.78%. Cameco Corp. shares rose $1.09 or 2% to $58.88.

Among individual stocks, Four Seasons Hotels fell $4.84 or 5% to $91.92. The company said fourth-quarter profit rose 33% to $15.6 million, but revenue fell 3.5% to $84.8-million from $87.9 million.

The junior S&P/TSX Venture composite index rose by 19.48 points, or 0.99%, to end the week at 1,996.76.

The Canadian dollar, meanwhile, closed at US80.68¢, down 1¢ from Thursday’s Bank of Canada close.

On Wall Street, U.S. stocks gained after the Commerce Department reported stronger-than-expected economic growth in the fourth quarter.

The Dow Jones industrial index rose 92.81 points or 0.86% to 10,841.60, while the Nasdaq composite index added 13.70 points to 2,065.40. The S&P 500 rose 11.17 points to 1,211.37.

For the week, the Dow rose 0.53%, the S&P 500 advanced 0.82%, and Nasdaq edged up 0.33%.

The U.S. economy grew at a 3.8% annual rate in the last quarter of 2004 — stronger than previously estimated. For all of 2004, the economy grew 4.4%, the strongest since 1999.