Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd beat Street estimates with a 31 percent growth in net profit at Rs 2,792 crore for the October-December quarter over the last year.
A Moneycontrol poll of seven brokerages had pegged the bottomline for the private sector lender at Rs 2,593.4 crore and net interest income at Rs 5,377.7 crore with a year-on-year growth of 24 percent.
The bank's net interest income surged 30 percent to Rs 5,653 crore for the December quarter as against Rs 4,334 crore a year ago. The spike in NII comes on the back of a year-on-year growth of 23 percent in loans and a jump in net interest margin to 5.47 percent from 4.62 percent a year back.
Kotak Mahindra Bank's loan book stood at Rs 3.10 lakh crore as of December, up from Rs 2.52 lakh crore last year year. Retail microfinance loans grew the fastest at 121 percent, followed by credit card outstanding which grew 85 percent on-year.
Unsecured personal loans and business loans surged 69 percent. All these segments gained partly on a low base. Unsecured retail advances, including microfinance, now constitutes 9.3 percent of the bank's loan book.
The bank's deposit growth was 12.8 percent, while the share of low-cost current and savings account deposits dropped to 53.3 percent from 59.9 percent a year ago. However, despite the fall in low-cost deposits, the bank was able to increase its net interest margin.
The bank's gross bad loan pile fell 14 percent on-year to Rs 5,994.6 crore. As a percentage of total loan book, gross bad loans stood at 1.9 percent, down from 2.7 percent a year ago. Fresh slippages were down to Rs 748 crore from Rs 983 crore in the previous quarter.
This reduced the bank's provisioning needs, thereby boosting the bottomline.
This is a developing story. Please stay tuned for updates.