HDFC Bank, the country?s largest lender by market capitalisation, on Tuesday reported a 23.1% y-o-y increase in net profit to R2,326.5 crore, aided largely by a robust net interest income and tightening of expenses. This, however, is the slowest growth in net profit for the private sector lender in over a decade.
For the third consecutive quarter, the bank?s net profit growth was below 30%, a level it had maintained consistently for more than a decade.
Net interest income (NII) for the quarter grew 15.3% y-o-y to R4,952.6 crore. The bank, in a release, said that NII was driven mostly by an average asset growth of 20.3%. This, in turn, led to an increase in net interest margins (NIM) from 4.2% in Q3 to 4.4% in Q4. Total income rose 14.9% y-o-y to R12,790 crore.
HDFC Bank deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar attributed the slight improvement in margins to an improved Casa and an increase in FCNR deposits.
Advances at the bank increased 26.4% to R3,03,000 crore. Sukthankar said wholesale loan growth was outpacing retail loan growth. The domestic loan mix between retail and wholesale in Q4 was 53:47, while in the year-ago period, it was 55:45.
The bank said it was seeing stress in the commercial vehicle and construction equipment segments and had degrown the portfolio by 10%.
Asset quality, however, improved in Q4 and gross non-performing assets (NPAs) were at 0.98% of the gross advances compared to 1.01% in the third quarter of FY14.
Net NPAs stood at 0.3% of the net advances. Sukthankar added that the bank sold bad loans worth R6 crore in Q4. Total restructured loans were at 0.2% of the gross advances, unchanged from the preceding quarter.
As a consequence, provisions at the bank were
R286.1 crore against R300.5 crore for the corresponding quarter last year.
Total deposits stood at R3,67,337 crore, an increase
of 24% y-o-y. Savings account deposits grew 16.9% y-o-y to R1,03,177 crore and current account deposits grew 17.5% y-o-y to R61,488 crore. Casa deposits were 44.8% of total deposits.
