SBI hits new high as PSU banks gain; Canara Bank, Bank of India up over 4%

Shares of public sector undertaking (PSU) banks rallied by up to 12 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in intra-day trade on Friday after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that bad loans cycle seems to have turned around as bulk of the legacy non-performing assets (NPAs) have already been recognized in the banking books.

Corporation Bank, United Bank of India, Uco Bank, Central Bank of India, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, Canara Bank and Indian Overseas Bank were up in the range of 6 to 8 per cent while Punjab National Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Andhra Bank, Indian Bank, Bank of Baroda and Syndicate Bank gained between 1 and 4 per cent. The State Bank of India (SBI) hit a new high of Rs 365, up 1 per cent on the NSE in intra-day trade.

At 12:31 am, Nifty PSU Bank index, the largest gainer among sectoral indices, was up 2.3 per cent, as compared to a 0.22 per cent decline in the benchmark Nifty 50 index. Nifty Bank and Nifty Private Bank indices were down 0.30 per cent and 0.60 per cent, respectively.

According to RBI's bi-annual financial stability report (FSR) released on Thursday, after market hours, banks are showing improvement in stability with the bulk of the legacy NPAs already recognised, and the NPA cycle “seems to have turned around”.

In a baseline scenario, the FSR expects the banking sector’s gross NPA ratio to decline from 9.3 per cent in March 2019 to 9.0 per cent in March 2020. The number of banks having gross NPA ratio of more than 20 per cent came down in March 2019, compared to September 2018.

This implied a broader improvement in asset quality. While banks’ asset quality improved, balance sheet liquidity, which is proportion of liquid assets and stable liabilities, as also profitability need improvement, the FSR said. CLICK HERE TO READ FULL REPORT

“We see that the commentary has turned positive on RBI’s outlook on baseline near term gross NPL in the past two publications after being negative since FY2016. RBI’s internal baseline NPL projection is at 9 per cent for FY2020 (30bps improvement yoy) though we believe that the performance could be far better than this forecast,” analysts at Kotak Securities said in a note.

COMPANY	LATEST	PREV CLOSE	GAIN(%)
UNION BANK (I)	83.05	77.60	7.02
CORPORATION BANK	25.45	23.80	6.93
UNITED BANK (I)	10.70	10.05	6.47
CENTRAL BANK	21.30	20.05	6.23
UCO BANK	18.65	17.75	5.07
I O B	12.25	11.70	4.70
BANK OF INDIA	92.20	88.40	4.30
CANARA BANK	290.00	278.50	4.13
PUNJAB NATL.BANK	80.90	78.00	3.72
PUN. & SIND BANK	26.95	26.25	2.67
BANK OF MAHA	16.00	15.60	2.56
ANDHRA BANK	23.85	23.35	2.14
BANK OF BARODA	123.65	121.40	1.85
ORIENTAL BANK	97.40	95.65	1.83
SYNDICATE BANK	41.85	41.20	1.58
INDIAN BANK	266.25	262.45	1.45
ST BK OF INDIA	363.85	362.15	0.47