India’s fourth-largest private sector bank, Yes Bank, reported a 31% growth in net profit for the quarter ended June on a year-on-year basis helped by higher interest income.
Net profit in the first quarter jumped to Rs 1,260 crore, from Rs 966 crore last year. While, the bank’s net interest income (NII) rose 23% to Rs 2,219 crore during the quarter, over the same period last year.
The bank, which ranked 74 on the 2017 Fortune India 500 list, saw a steady growth in advances during the quarter, which rose 53.4% to Rs 2.15 lakh crore. Interestingly, retail banking advances more than doubled during the quarter, the bank said in its exchange filing. The bank’s retail business now contributes 14% to total advances, up from 10.5% last year.
Asset quality, however, worsened with gross non-performing assets (NPA) ratio rising to 1.31% from 0.97% last year and 1.28% in the previous quarter.
On a sequential basis, gross NPAs rose 7.5% to Rs 2,825 crore. However, net NPAs saw a slight dip, falling 3.8% to Rs 1,263 crore during the quarter.
Provisions for the quarter stood at Rs 626 crore, out of which Rs 380 crore was provisioning for NPAs and Rs 93 crore was for mark-to-market losses on bonds. Provisions saw a sharp jump from Rs 286 crore in the same quarter last year and Rs 400 crore in the previous quarter.
Yes Bank also said that the provisioning for NPAs included Rs 149 crore set aside towards increasing the provision coverage ratio to 55.3% from 50% in the last quarter of 2018.
The bank’s net interest margin for the quarter stood at 3.3%, while return on equity improved to 19.4% from 17.4%, last year.
Shares of Yes Bank, however, fell 4.16% closing at Rs 367.5 on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Thursday.
