SBI a top pick in banking space, says Patnaik

SBI is a top pick in banking space, says Tirthankar Patnaik, EVP - Institutional Sales, Religare Capital Markets.

Patnaik told CNBC-TV18, “We have been positive on SBI all through the year. The call earlier in the year had been on rate sensitive’s as the central bank starts easing, the main concern for the banking space has been asset quality and that is the one wants to see the massive impact or more impact here.”
He further added, “SBI has sort of with Friday’s results delivered precisely on that, slippages numbers have been meaningfully below street expectations and not just that they are likely to be lower going forward. We expect provision levels to also come down going forward and so a number of Rs 160 billion for the year FY13 is not unreachable and in terms of valuations, SBI is fairly cheap right now so we will maintain our preference for SBI at this point.”