India’s largest private sector lender ICICI Bank on Friday reported a 55.8% drop in net profit for the quarter ended September. The bank’s profit for the second quarter came in at Rs 909 crore as against Rs 2,058 crore in the year-ago period.
A Bloomberg poll of analysts had estimated the profit for Q2 at Rs 949.3 crore.
The fall in the bottomline figure can be attributed to a steep drop in other income, which fell over 39% year-on-year to Rs 3,156 crore as against Rs 5,186 crore last year.
Net interest income, however, grew 12% over last year, coming in at Rs 6,418 crore with a steady loan growth of nearly 13%. ICICI Bank said its advances at the end of Q2 stood at Rs 5.44 lakh care, up significantly from Rs 4.82 lakh crore in the previous year.
On the asset quality front too there was improvement. Fresh additions to gross NPAs narrowed to Rs 3,117 crore in the September quarter as against Rs 4,036 crore in the previous quarter. Gross NPA ratio stood at 8.54%, lower than 8.81% in Q1 of FY19 while net NPA ratio was 3.65% in Q2 as against 4.19% last quarter.
ICICI Bank saw recoveries and upgrades from NPAs worth Rs 1,006 crore in Q2. The bank’s provisioning and contingencies dropped around 33% quarter on quarter, standing at Rs 3,994 crore.
Following the pattern of significant growth in fee income seen by every private sector bank that has reported results so far, ICICI Bank too saw a 17% rise in fee income, with retail fee income growing 21% over last year.
With the uncertainty over the top management behind it, analysts are of the view that the future may hold an uptick for ICIC Bank. Prakash Diwan, market expert said, “Despite the leadership issues the bank managed to post a good credit growth, which is a positive sign.”
ICICI Bank’s stock closed 1.45% lower on the BSE at Rs 315.05 per share on Friday, while the benchmark Sensex fell 1.01% to 33,349.31.
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