Bandhan Bank Q1 profit jumps 138pc to Rs 886.5 cr

Bandhan Bank on Friday said its June quarter net profit more than doubled to Rs 886.5 crore in April-June 2022-23 aided by a decline in bad loans.The Kolkata-headquartered private sector lender had logged a net profit of Rs 373.1 crore in the year-ago period.Total income increased to Rs 2,844.1 crore from Rs 2,731 crore.

Bandhan Bank on Friday said its June quarter net profit more than doubled to Rs 886.5 crore in April-June 2022-23 aided by a decline in bad loans.

The Kolkata-headquartered private sector lender had logged a net profit of Rs 373.1 crore in the year-ago period.

Total income increased to Rs 2,844.1 crore from Rs 2,731 crore. The interest income of the lender jumped to Rs 2,514.4 crore from Rs 2,114.1 crore, the bank said in a regulatory filing.

Commenting on the performance, Bandhan Bank Managing Director and CEO Chandra Shekhar Ghosh said, ''With asset quality and credit cost stabilising, our focus in FY 23 (2022-23) will be to grow the balance sheet and on product and geographic diversification as per the bank's strategy.'' On the asset quality front, the lender witnessed improvement as gross non-performing assets (NPAs) fell to 7.25 per cent of advances by June-end 2022 from 8.18 per cent by the year-ago period.

Net NPA too declined to 1.92 per cent from 3.29 per cent in the same quarter a year ago.

As a result, the bank's provision for bad loans and contingencies eased multi-fold to Rs 642.43 crore in the quarter under review from Rs 1,460.86 crore a year ago, it said.

''The 138 per cent growth in profit during the quarter is due to lower provisioning at Rs 642 crore as compared to Rs 1,460 crore in the previous period,'' Ghosh told reporters in Kolkata.

There has been a fresh slippage of Rs 1,125 crore in the first quarter, he said. The provision coverage ratio of the bank increased to 74.9 per cent as of June 30, 2022 from 61.8 per cent at June-end, 2021.

Due to a fall in treasury yields, the operating profit of the bank decreased by seven per cent to Rs 1,820 crore as compared to Rs 1,957 crore in the same period previous fiscal, he said. Total advances stood at Rs 96,649.7 crore as of June 30 this year, up by 20.3 per cent from Rs 80,356.9 crore at the end of the year-ago quarter. Ghosh said micro-credit accounts for 44.6 per cent of the advances, SME (small and medium enterprises) for 28 per cent, housing for 25 per cent and retail for 1.8 per cent. Total deposits grew by 20.3 per cent to Rs 93,057 crore as of June 30, 2022, as compared to Rs 77,335.5 crore a year ago. He also stated that ''the overall collection efficiency ratio of the bank during the first quarter of the current fiscal stood at 96 per cent as compared to 84 per cent in the previous similar period''.

The improvement in collection efficiency was due to the recovery of the country's economy which was badly hit by COVID-19.

''Owing to flood in Assam, the collection efficiency ratio of the bank in the state stood at 93 per cent in the first quarter. The same in West Bengal was at 98 per cent,'' he said. The capital adequacy ratio stood at 19.4 per cent at the end of June 2022, while the interest margin rose to eight per cent. ''The bank is adequately capitalised,'' Ghosh said.

The lender will open 530 new branches this fiscal, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)