Allied Irish Banks (AIB) posted its first ever full-year net loss, after being burned in a property market crash, and did not offer any exact guidance on when or how it would restore profits and its capital base.

Allied Irish, in which the government last year acquired a 25 percent indirect stake and which is also participating in a bad bank scheme, repeated on Tuesday it was looking at options to replenish its capital, with more state help a last resort.

There isn't a specific outline of exactly how much we are going to raise and how we are going to raise it, Alan Kelly, general manager, group finance, told Reuters.

Ireland's second-biggest bank by market value said it would transfer property loans worth up to 23 billion euros ($31 billion) to the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), Ireland's bad bank, slightly below an earlier estimate of 24 billion euros.

To plug the resulting hole in its capital base, Allied Irish said it would look at selling assets, carrying out a rights issue and talk to companies that have expressed interest in taking a strategic stake in it.

If needed, it may also ask the state for more assistance, the bank said.

These results were always likely to fall short in detail of what the market needed to make a fuller assessment of AIB's investment case, particularly with so much uncertainty ahead of the NAMA transfer and the capital requirements that will result, Bloxham Stockbrokers said in a note.

In the 'pre NAMA vacuum', certainty is not plentiful, Bloxham said, referring to the NAMA loan transfers, which the government expects to start later this month.

The bank said the outlook was still extremely challenging.

In 2010, AIB will prioritize restructuring and restoring its businesses to underpin viability, and renewing the group's credibility amongst all its stakeholders, it said.

Allied Irish's volatile shares were up 3.5 percent at 1.035 euros by 0944 GMT, still well below a peak of 3.4 euros last year when the government unveiled the details of the bad bank plan and more than 24 euros in 2007 at the end of the Celtic Tiger boom. The wider Irish market <.ISEQ> was 0.3 percent lower.

Allied Irish's net loss of 2.3 billion euros ($3.1 billion), its first time in the red since its foundation in 1966, compared with 2.9 billion euros in a Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S poll and an 890 million euro profit in 2008.

The bank's operating profit before provisions increased slightly from the previous year to almost 3 billion euros. It swung into the red after 5.4 billion in provisions, mainly on loans to the construction and property sector. (Editing by Mike Nesbit and Karen Foster)

($1 = 0.7395 euro)