State Bank of India's stock broking arm, SBICap Securities, which has been growing at over 60 percent so far this year in customer addition, today said for the first time the company will turn in a small profit this fiscal, driven by the retail portfolio.
"Thanks to our large retail portfolio, we are already in cash-profit. We hope to report a net profit of Rs 5 crore and an operating profit of Rs 23 crore this financial year, for the first time.
"Since the past three years, when we started investing heavily in this arm, we have lost around Rs 51 crore, mostly by way of depreciation," SBI Caps Securities Managing Director Mani Palvesan said.
The retail portfolio is the most profitable for the company, Palvesan said.
He was talking to reporters on the sidelines of launch of a new online trading platform on the HTML5 version called Sbismart.com that offers a host of additional features and can be accessed on any connected devices now.
Launching the platform, SBI Group Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya said they have invested heavily into the retail broking arm.
"SBI Caps, the parent of SBICaps Securities, has been at the vanguard of innovation and the current offering ensures that investors can trade from any device now," she said.
Palvesan said the company has around 1.2 million customers but only about 10 per cent are active. Out of the total more than 95 per cent are SBI account-holders, but going forward the company will be aggressively tapping non-SBI clients as well.
On retail customer addition, he said the company has added 0.6 million last two years alone, taking the total demat account holders to 1.2 million.
"While the whole industry shrank 20 per cent last year, we grew by over 20 per cent. In FY16 we grew by 20 per cent, in FY15 our growth was 60 per cent and in the current financial year also we are clipping at 60 per cent." In terms of market share, he said SBICaps Securities enjoys around 3 per cent of the cash market or around Rs 500 crore, wherein it charges 0.5 per cent as commission and 0.3 per cent of the transaction value as commission for delivery or Rs 25, whichever is higher.
In terms of overall ranking, he said the company should be among the top seven players.
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