BoB net up 52% to Rs 501 cr

Bank of Baroda has posted a 52.2 per cent growth in net profit for the third quarter ended December 2007 at Rs 501.5 crore on jump in income from sale of investments including equity, recoveries from written-off accounts, commissions and interest income.

Total income during the quarter rose to Rs 3,620.18 crore from Rs 2,668.11 crore in the year-ago period. Interest income rose by 28.60 per cent to Rs 3002.19 crore. Interest expenditure was up by 40.6 per cent to Rs 2,004.72 crore.

During the December quarter, the net interest income rose by 9.8 per cent to Rs 997.47 crore from Rs 908.21 crore.

The competitive pricing (read higher deposit rates and lower lending rates) impacted the net interest income, Chairman and Managing Director Anil Khandelwal said. The net interest margins stood at 3 per cent as against 3.04 per cent a year ago.

Sale of investments brought in Rs 194 crore in the third quarter as against Rs 30 crore in the corresponding period a year ago, while equity fetched Rs 94 crore as against Rs 7 crore. Recoveries from written-off accounts stood at Rs 134 crore over Rs 55 crore a year ago.

Total business rose by 22.35 per cent to Rs 2,32,418 crore at the end of December 2007. Global deposits have increased by 22 per cent to Rs 1,36,900 crore. The shares of low cost deposits (savings and current account) declined from 37.3 per cent from 40.4 per cent a year ago.

The share of low cost deposits is going down as part of money (of depositors) in moving to avenues such as mutual funds. This will put pressure on cost of deposits, Khandelwal said. The cost of deposits rose to 5.60 per cent from 4.61 per cent a year ago.

The global advances were up by 23 per cent to Rs 95,518 crore from Rs 77,661 crore a year ago. The bank's retail credit rose by 25.83 per cent at end-December 2007 to Rs 15,402 crore. The retail credit now forms 20.4 per cent of total gross domestic credit. The yield on advances moved up from 8.16 per cent to 9.61 per cent.

Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) were down to Rs 2,040.30 crore (what is per cent form) from Rs 2,388.60 crore as on December 31, 2006. The net NPAs too have declined from 0.67 per cent to 0.54 per cent.

The capital adequacy was at a healthy level of 13.51 per cent as against 12.24 per cent in the year-ago period.