Bank of Baroda Q3 net profit doubles to Rs 2,197 crore; interest income surges 14%

Bank of Baroda's standalone profit after tax doubled to Rs 2,197 crore.

New Delhi: State-run Bank of Baroda's (BoB) standalone profit after tax (PAT) doubled to Rs 2,197 crore in the quarter ended in December aided by healthy growth in net interest income (NII) and on lower provisions.

This compares with a standalone PAT of Rs 1,061 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal.

“Profit has been driven by NII, which is up double-digit. NII was up despite the fact that we had a challenging environment in terms of growth. Most of the contribution to the high NII has come from the improvement in margins. Along with NII, fee income has also grown,? the bank's Managing Director and CEO Sanjiv Chadha told reporters.

NII surged by 14.38 per cent to Rs 8,552 crore in Q3FY22 as against Rs 7,477 crore in the same period of the previous fiscal. Fee income increased by 15.50 per cent to Rs 1,557 crore from Rs 1,342 core. Net interest margins improved to 3.13 per cent from 2.77 per cent.

Gross non-performing asset (GNPA) ratio declined to 7.25 per cent from 8.48 per cent and net NPA reduced to 2.25 per cent from 2.39 per cent.

“We believe that this improvement (in asset quality) is likely to continue particularly because the challenges that came from Covid are largely behind us. Therefore, the improvement which we are seeing in the credit cycle should manifest itself more decisively in our GNPA and NNPA figures, going forward,” Chadha said.

Fresh slippages in the quarter stood at Rs 2,830 crore. It recovered Rs 2,032 crore and upgraded Rs 1,272 crore of loans in the third quarter.

The bank wrote of Rs 3,694 crore of bad loans compared to Rs 4,708 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal.

Total provisions declined by 27.36 per cent to Rs 2,506 crore from Rs 3,450 crore last year in the same quarter.

“During this quarter, we had a significant write back in a government guaranteed account. We have tried to use that write back for some advanced provisioning, which is over and above what is required as per the RBI norms,” Chadha said without naming the account.

Provision coverage ratio (PCR) of the bank stood at 85.95 per cent including technically written off accounts (TWO) and 70.60 per cent excluding TWO in Q3FY22.

The lender's capital adequacy ratio (CRAR) improved to 15.47 per cent in the quarter from 12.93 per cent in the same quarter of the previous fiscal.

Tier-I stood at 13.24 per cent (CET-1 at 11.30 per cent, AT1 at 1.94 per cent) and tier-II stood at 2.23 per cent as of December 2021.

Domestic advances increased by 3.36 per cent y-o-y to Rs 6,54,315 crore. Total deposits increased by 2.46 per cent to Rs 9,78,034 crore, according to the investor presentation uploaded on the exchanges. Also Read: Digital Rupee could debut by early 2023: Report

The bank is looking at a loan growth of 7-10 per cent in the current fiscal. Also Read: 7th Pay Commission: Centre may finalise on basic hike, DA arrears soon, check latest update