ICICI Bank reports 25% rise in Q3 profit, exceeds estimates

ICICI Bank Ltd on January 22 reported over 25% growth in net profit for the December quarter, helped by lower provisioning and higher net interest income.

The private lender's net profit rose to Rs 6,193.81 crore in the quarter ended December 31 from Rs 4,939.59 crore in the same quarter of the corresponding year. According to an average of estimates by four brokerage firms polled by Moneycontrol, ICICI Bank was expected to report a profit of Rs 5,835 crore.

Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, was up 23.44% to Rs 12,236.04 crore from Rs 9,912.46 crore last year. Other income grew 6.42% to Rs 4,987.07 crore.

Provisions and contigencies fell 26.8% to Rs 2,007.30 crore from Rs 2,741.72 crore year-on-year.

Gross non performing assets (NPAs) rose 6.3% to Rs 37,052.74 crore in Q3FY22 from Rs 34,860.43 crore in Q3FY21. Slippages stood at Rs 4,018 crore, lower than Rs 5,578 crore in the previous quarter.

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As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs improved 4.13% as compared to 4.82% in the previous quarter and 4.28% in the year-ago quarter. Net NPAs declined at 0.85% in the quarter quarter compared to 0.99% in the previous quarter and 0.63% in the same quarter last year.

Advances for the quarter grew 16.44% to Rs 8.14 trillion while deposits rose 16.37% to Rs 10.17 trillion. Net interest margin rose to 3.96% against 3.67% a quarter ago.

Recoveries and upgrades of NPAs, excluding write-offs and sale, were at Rs 4,209 crore in Q3. Gross NPAs written-off in the quarter were at Rs 4,088 crore.

Among subsidiaries, ICICI Securities posted a profit of Rs 380 crore in the December quarter, up 42% from Rs 267 crore in Q3-2021.ICICI Prudential Life Insurance's profit was at Rs 311 crore against Rs 306 crore a year ago. ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company posted a profit of Rs 318 crore versus Rs 314 crore, while ICICI Prudential AMC’s profit dropped to Rs 334 crore from Rs 358 crore in the year-ago quarter.

The lender said its mobile banking app, IMobile, has 53 lakh activations from non-ICICI-Bank account holders as of December 2021 and the value of transactions in the quarter increased by 73% QoQ. Its another digital platform InstaBIZ also saw strong growth and the value of financial transactions grew by about 68% YoY.