ICICI Bank Q1 net up 12%, retail loan surges 25%, NPA down

The country's largest private sector lender said total advances increased to Rs 3,99,738 crore in June quarter from Rs 3,47,067 crore in the year-ago period. The year-on-year growth in domestic advances was 17 percent, it added.While addressing press conference, Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO, ICICI Bank said she expects domestic advances to grow 17-18 percent in FY16.

It continued to see robust growth in retail disbursements resulting in a year-on-year growth of 25 percent in the retail portfolio, which constituted about 43 percent of total loan portfolio of the bank. The retail loan growth was higher than expectations of 14 percent.

Deposits increased by 10 percent to Rs 3,67,877 crore with CASA (current account-saving account) deposits growth of 12 percent. The bank said its CASA ratio was at 44.1 percent in June quarter against 45.5 percent in March quarter and 43 percent in the corresponding quarter of last fiscal.

Other income (non-interest income) climbed 4.9 percent to Rs 2,990 crore, including foreign exchange gain of Rs 346.90 crore (against Rs 103.09 crore in Q1FY15), impacted by lower treasury income. Operating profit grew by 11.5 percent Y-o-Y to Rs 5,037.8 crore due to stable employee cost (up 1.6 percent).

Provisions for bad loans surged 31.7 percent to Rs 956 crore in the quarter ended June compared to Rs 1,344 crore in the corresponding quarter of last fiscal, but sequentially reported a 29 percent fall. Its provision coverage ratio was 58.2 percent at June 2015.

Net loans to companies whose facilities have been restructured by the bank were Rs 12,604 crore in Q1FY16 compared to Rs 11,017 crore in Q4FY15, it said.

Kochhar said she expects stable asset quality going forward, adding FY16 will see lower stressed additions compared to FY15.Overall asset quality of the bank will depend on how the economy moves going forward, she said.The bank has shown good improvement in its asset quality on sequential basis. Gross non-performing assets (NPA) fell by 10 basis points (up 63 basis points year-on-year) to 3.68 percent and net NPA declined by 3 basis points (up 59 bps on yearly basis) to 1.58 percent compared to March quarter.In absolute term, gross NPA rose 0.3 percent quarter-on-quarter & 39.6 percent year-on-year to Rs 15,137.6 crore and net NPA increased 1.2 percent sequentially and 84.7 percent on yearly basis to Rs 6,333.3 crore in first quarter of current financial year 2015-16 due to lumpy accounts.Fresh addition to gross NPA during the quarter was Rs 1,672 crore, which was quite lower compared to Rs 3,260 crore addition in Q4FY15.Even slippages from restructured loans fell significantly to Rs 292 crore compared to Rs 2,250 crore on sequential basis.Kochhar said incremental restructuring in June quarter was Rs 1,962 crore against Rs 1,247 crore Q-o-Q. Most of the incremental restructuring was a result of applications received after March 2015, she added."Now we have no restructuring pipeline," she said.The bank sold loans worth Rs 500 crore to asset reconstruction companies during the quarter against nil in March quarter.It has 6-7 percent loan exposure to power sector, 5 percent to steel and 12 percent overall exposure to infra sector.Capital adequacy ratio was 16.37 percent in the quarter ended June compared to 17.02 percent in March quarter and 17 percent in the year-ago period.

At 13:20 hours IST, the scrip of ICICI Bank was quoting at Rs 306.05, up Rs 15.10, or 5.19 percent on the Bombay Stock Exchange.Posted by Sunil Shankar Matkar