Dhanlaxmi Bank net profit plunges 44.5% to Rs 12 crore in December qtr

Private sector lender Dhanlaxmi Bank on Tuesday registered 44.5 per cent dip in net profit to Rs 11.81 crore in the third quarter ended December 2020 on muted retail business even as bad loan ratio declined.

The bank's net profit was Rs 21.28 crore in the year-ago period.

The total income was almost flat at Rs 286.21 crore during October-December of this fiscal, as against Rs 285.85 crore a year ago, the bank said in a regulatory filing.

The interest income came down to Rs 237.36 crore from Rs 250.88 crore.

Revenues from retail banking fell 31 per cent to Rs 83.67 crore, compared to Rs 121.14 crore in the same period previous fiscal.

However, treasury and corporate banking income increased by 32 per cent and 16.3 per cent, respectively.

The asset quality of the bank showed improvement as the gross non-performing assets fell to 5.78 per cent of the gross advances by the end of the third quarter this fiscal, from 7.13 per cent at December-end 2019.

In absolute value, the gross NPAs of the bank stood at Rs 395.02 crore, as against Rs 490.47 crore.

The net NPA ratio was 1.11 per cent (Rs 72.40 crore) by the end of the third quarter of FY21 against 1.62 per cent (Rs 105.21 crore).

The bank has set aside Rs 20.41 crore as provision for bad loans and contingencies for the quarter, compared to Rs 24.35 crore for the year-ago period.

Dhanlaxmi Bank said it has made an ad-hoc provision of Rs 37.08 crore towards those accounts that were not to be categorised as NPA during March-August as per COVID-19 regulatory package announced by the RBI.

The same has been shown under other liabilities and provisions, the bank said, adding interest on such accounts has been recognised as income.

Provision coverage ratio (including technical write off) was 92.68 per cent at December-end FY21.

Shares of the bank closed flat at Rs 14.04 apiece on BSE.