Bandhan Bank on Friday reported a 57.5 per cent drop in net profit for the fourth quarter ended March 31 with provisions on the higher side on a year on year basis.

Net profit during the quarter was Rs 808.29 crore compared to Rs 1902.34 crore a year ago. On a sequential basis however, net profit was up 177.7 per cent from Rs 290.56 crore from the third quarter of FY23.

The bank’s net interest income during the quarter was Rs 2,472 crore, down 2.7 per cent from Rs 2,540 crore driven by interest rate changes on the deposit side.

The bank has made a provision (other than taxes) of Rs 740 crore during the quarter, which was Rs 4.7 crore in the corresponding quarter previous year. The bank had made accelerated provisions during the first three quarters of FY22 which had impacted the bottomline during that period.

“The big lever which made a difference was on the provisioning side. In Q4FY22, we had very negligible provisioning. In FY22 the first three quarters were really challenging where we had credit cost going up by almost 10 per cent,” said Sunil Samdani, chief financial officer, Bandhan Bank.

The bank has seen an improvement on the asset quality side.

Gross NPAs as on March 31, 2023 was 4.9 per cent against 6.5 per cent as on March 31, 2022. Net NPAs as on March 31, 2023 was 1.2 per cent against 1.7 per cent as on March 31, 2022.

“We are building new capabilities to unlock greater business impact. Our new business streams such as commercial vehicle lending, loans against property for business, government operations, among others, will add to the top line as well as the bottom lines over the next few quarters,” said Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, managing director and CEO, Bandhan Bank adding that bank also said that its customer base has crossed 3 crore.

Bandhan Bank scrips at Rs 237.95 were down 2.48 per cent over the previous close at the Bombay Stock Exchange.

PNB Net

Punjab National Bank (PNB) on Friday reported over five-fold jump in its net profit to Rs 1,159 crore for the March 2023 quarter, helped by lower bad loans and a rise in interest income.