State-run Canara Bank on Thursday reported a more that two-fold jump in its profit after tax at Rs 1,502 crore for the quarter ended December 2021, helped by a rise in net interest income (NII) and lower provisions.
Its net profit stood at Rs 696 crore in the same quarter of the preceding financial year.
"The growth in profit was 115.80 per cent. During the quarter, we concentrated on NII as the treasury income was to be impacted due to hardening of yields."
"Our strategy was to grow net interest income to compensate for the deficiency in the treasury income. This strategy worked well and we could increase NII by 14 per cent y-o-y,” the bank’s Managing Director and CEO L V Prabhakar told reporters.
NII grew to Rs 6,946 crore in the December quarter from Rs 6,087 crore in the year-ago period.
Net interest margins (NIM) stood at 2.83 per cent as against 2.79 per cent.
Gross non-performing assets (GNPAs) declined to 7.80 per cent from 7.46 per cent, but net NPAs increased to 2.86 per cent from 2.64 per cent.
Slippages in the quarter stood at Rs 2,699 crore. Total cash recovery, including recovery from written off accounts, was Rs 2,784 crore.
Prabhakar said the bank will be able maintain its slippages target of Rs 14,000-15,000 crore, given during the beginning of this fiscal.
Provisions declined by 35.56 per cent to Rs 2,946 crore from Rs 4,572 crore in the December 2020 quarter. In the third quarter, the bank made an additional provision of Rs 1,355 crore towards family pensions.
In the third quarter, the bank made an additional provision of Rs 1,355 crore towards family pensions.
It also increased provision to 75 per cent from 50 per cent on two Srei group companies.
The lender has an exposure of Rs 3,100 crore to Srei Infrastructure Finance and Srei Equipment Finance. Both the companies were classified as NPAs during the second quarter of FY2022.
Provision coverage ratio (PCR) stood at 83.26 per cent.
Capital to risk weighted assets ratio (CRAR) stood at 14.80 per cent, out of which tier-I was 11.58 per cent and tier-II 3.22 per cent.
Prabhakar also said the lender may look at raising Rs 1,000 crore from additional tier 1 bonds going ahead.
Domestic advances (gross) grew by 8.84 per cent to Rs 7,01,859 crore while deposits rose by 6.5 per cent to Rs 9,88,659 crore as at December-end.
The bank’s scrip ended at Rs 240.70 apiece, up 8.77 per cent on BSE on Thursday.
