ICICI Bank Q3 profit up 25% to $832mn

Bloomberg

ICICI Bank Ltd’s profit in the third quarter rises 25% from a year earlier, helped by interest earnings from lending as the impact from the
coronavirus pandemic eased.
Net income was 61.9 billion rupees ($832 million) in the quarter ended December compared with 49.4 billion rupees a year ago, the company said in a statement to the stock exchanges. That beat the average estimate of 58.6 billion rupees from eight analysts in a Bloomberg survey.
ICICI, which provides most of its loans to the retail sector, has been growing rapidly, helped by mortgage and car loans. India’s second largest private lender joins other banks such as HDFC Bank to ramp up lending.
Still, a new wave of coronavirus cases has led to concerns over the sustainability of consumer demand, although the central bank
believes any impact could be short-lived.
“We don’t anticipate any economic disruption to the portfolio we have,” said Sandeep Batra, an executive director at ICICI Bank, in a media call. “We remain optimistic about the overall economy.”
ICICI Bank’s gross bad loan ratio narrowed to 4.13% as of end of December from 4.82% in the previous quarter, according to the statement. It set aside provisions of 20.1 billion rupees in the December quarter, down 26% from 27.1 billion rupees in the previous three-month period, it said.