UPDATE 2-Cincinnati Financial Q3 profit tops Wall Street view

* Q3 oper EPS $0.59 vs estimate $0.42 * Lower catastrophe losses boost oper profit

* P&C underwriting becomes profitable (Adds conference call details, analysts comments, updates share movement)

By Brenton Cordeiro

BANGALORE, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Cincinnati Financial Corp (CINF.O) posted a quarterly profit that exceeded Wall Street estimates, as the U.S. Midwestern property and casualty insurer's underwriting benefited from lower catastrophe losses.

Cincinnati Financial reported loss and loss expenses from catastrophe losses in its property and casualty operations of $6 million, down 90 percent from the year-ago quarter.

Analyst Paul Newsome from Sandler O'Neill said that though the catastrophe losses were better than expected, he wasn't sure how sustainable Cincinnati Financial's earnings levels were, as a lot of the benefit the company saw in the third quarter related to "very favorable weather."

On a conference call with analysts, Cincinnati Financial said it continued to see slightly lower commercial renewal pricing during the third quarter.

"There's still quite a bit of pressure, so that's why you won't see top-line growth for the commercial lines side for quite a while," analyst Michael Phillips of Stifel Nicolaus & Co said.

He added that while the company was taking the right steps to bring about a turnaround, "the steps are many to take."

For the third quarter, the S&P 500 index .SPX component earned $171 million, or $1.05 a share, for the third quarter, compared with $247 million, or $1.50 a share, a year earlier.

However, operating profit, a measure commonly used by insurance analysts as it excludes investment gains and losses, increased to 59 cents a share, from 45 cents last year.

Analysts were looking for a profit of 42 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

"We achieved $36 million of pre-tax underwriting profit and a combined ratio of 95.1 percent for the third quarter, our best result since the fourth quarter of 2007," Chief Executive Kenneth Stecher said in a statement. Combined ratio is the percentage of premiums an insurer has to pay out in claims and expenses. A figure over 100 indicates that underwriting was unprofitable.

In a regulatory filing, the Fairfield, Ohio-based company said it sees 12 percent to 15 percent average growth in book value per share between 2010 and 2014.

Cincinnati Financial said on the call that it received $140 million as cash proceeds and 4.4 million Pfizer shares for the Wyeth shares it held, following the takeover of Wyeth by Pfizer Inc (PFE.N).

Shares of the company were up 33 cents to $25.49 Thursday afternoon on Nasdaq. (Additional reporting by Anurag Kotoky in Bangalore; Editing by Vinu Pilakkott, Unnikrishnan Nair)