Private sector lender Axis Bank on April 27 reported a standalone loss of Rs 5,728.42 crore for the March quarter of FY23 due to the buying cost of Citi Bank's India consumer business during the quarter.
The profit excluding the impact of exceptional items would have been Rs 6,625.29 crore for the quarter, a massive 61 percent growth against the reported profit of Rs 4,117.77 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal.
For the March FY23 quarter, it reported an exceptional item of Rs 12,489.82 crore, which was the cost of buying the business assets and business liabilities of Citibank's India consumer business from Citibank NA, and the NBFC consumer business from Citicorp Finance (India).
The exceptional cost also included Rs 179.27 crore towards one-time stamp duty costs relating to the acquisition of Citi India Consumer Business and Rs 361.47 crore towards harmonisation of provisioning and expense policies and estimates used in the preparation of financial statements, the bank said in its exchange filing.
Net interest income, the difference between interest earned and interest expended, grew by 33.1 percent year-on-year to Rs 11,742.2 crore for the quarter, with net interest margin improving by 73 bps to 4.22 percent in Q4FY23.
Total deposits grew 15 percent YoY and 12 percent QoQ to Rs 9.46 lakh crore, while the advances increased by 19 percent YoY and 11 percent QoQ to Rs 8.45 lakh crore.
The profit was supported by a sharp drop in provisions and contingencies which fell 69 percent year-on-year to Rs 305.77 crore in Q4FY23. The sequential decline in the same was 79 percent.
"Specific loan loss provisions for Q4FY23 stood at Rs 270 crore," Axis Bank said.
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The bank has not utilised COVID provisions during the quarter. It holds cumulative provisions of Rs 11,928 crore at the end of Q4FY23. "It is pertinent to note that this is over and above the NPA provisioning included in our PCR calculations. These cumulative provisions translate to a standard asset coverage of 1.42 percent as on March 2023," it said, adding that the credit cost for the quarter ended March 2023 stood at 0.22 percent, declined 10 bps YoY and 43 bps QoQ.
Asset quality of the private sector lender improved further with the gross NPA as a percentage of gross advances falling 36 bps QoQ to 2.02 percent and net NPA was down by 8 bps sequentially to 0.39 percent for the March FY23 quarter.
The capital adequacy ratio as per Basel-III norms was 17.64 percent at the end of March FY23, improving from 17.60 percent as of December FY23, but declining from 18.54 percent reported as of March FY22.
The bank recorded a 15.9 percent year-on-year growth in non-interest income at Rs 4,895.3 crore for the quarter ended March FY23, while the pre-provision operating profit grew by 41.8 percent to Rs 9,167.6 crore for the same period.
For the financial year 2022-23, the profit has declined by 26.5 percent to Rs 9,580 crore but the same excluding Citibank transaction grew by 68 percent to Rs 21,933 crore, the bank said. The net interest income grew by 30 percent to Rs 42,946 crore compared to the previous year.
Axis Bank has received approval from the board of directors to borrow or raise funds up to Rs 35,000 crore via debt instruments.
The bank said the board has recommended a final dividend of Re 1 per share for the financial year 2022-23.
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