Private sector lender IndusInd Bank on Wednesday reported a 29 per cent jump in its net profit to Rs. 396.05 crore in the three months to March driven by higher margins, fee income growth and cost-control measures.
“We have been able to maintain the trend-line growth, both in the topline and bottomline, in profit and loss as well as the balance sheet,” Managing Director and Chief Executive Romesh Sobti said in Mumbai.
The bank during the fourth quarter saw a 28 per cent spike in fee income to Rs. 441.87 crore as against Rs. 344 crore in the year-ago period. It is boosted by 49 per cent jump in forex income which stood at Rs. 109.1 crore during the period as compared with Rs. 73.2 crore a year ago. For the entire fiscal, net profit jumped 33 per cent to Rs. 1,408.02 crore as against Rs. 1,061.18 crore in the previous year.
The net interest margin in the quarter stood at 3.75 per cent as against 3.70 per cent in the year-ago period.
“There was improvement in our net interest margin in spite of tight liquidity conditions,” Mr. Sobti said.
Improvement in margins also resulted in increase in return on assets to 1.91 percent during the period from 1.77 per cent a year ago. Revenue rose 27 per cent to Rs. 1,304.13 crore as against Rs. 1,029.012 crore in the year-ago quarter, while total income stood at Rs. 2,702.19 crore as against Rs. 2,190.66 crore last year.
However, asset quality deteriorated in the quarter with gross non-performing assets rising to 1.12 per cent from 1.03 per cent, while net NPAs rose to 0.33 per cent from 0.31 per cent.
But Mr. Sobti is confident of stable asset quality going forward. He also expects some uptick in the commercial vehicle finance business. The Pune-based bank took a mark-to-market loss on its government bond portfolio to the tune of Rs. 88 crore for the full year, while in the fourth quarter it was Rs. 28 crore.
For the full year, total advances of the bank grew 24 per cent to Rs. 55,102 crore as against Rs. 44,321 crore last year, while deposits rose 12 per cent to Rs. 60,502 crore from Rs. 54,117 crore.
So far the bank has sold Rs. 138 crore of its stressed loans to asset reconstruction companies (ARCs), while the reporting quarter saw it selling Rs. 35 crore of NPAs to ARCs.
Mr. Sobti said he expects ARC portfolio to half in next six months.
The bank had started disbursing gold loans since the past four months in eight states. The bank is focusing only its own customers for gold loans and is disbursing around Rs. 6 crore a month,” Mr. Sobti said.
