ICICI Bank Q1 net up 14%; reports stability in asset quality

Country's largest private sector lender ICICI Bank today reported 14 per cent rise in its consolidated net profit for the June quarter at Rs 3,232 crore, and hinted at an end to the asset quality woes which cheered investors.
On a standalone basis, the bank's post tax profit for the April-June period was up 12 per cent at Rs 2,976 crore.
Its total income was at Rs 15,802 crore and the core net interest income moved up 14 per cent to Rs 5,115 crore on the back of 17 per cent credit growth and an expansion in margins.
The other income growth was a tepid 5 per cent at Rs 2,990 crore on a decline in treasury profits and dividend from subsidiaries.

Its fresh slippages came down to Rs 1,672 crore from over Rs 3,200 crore in the preceding March quarter, which prompted its managing director and chief executive Chanda Kochhar to say that there is "stability" in the book.
As compared to last year's Rs 1,200 crore, there was an increase in slippages, and the trend was similar in provisions as well, which rose 31 per cent over last year but were down 28 per cent over the preceding quarter.

Slippages from assets restructured already stood at Rs 290 crore and the sale to ARCs was Rs 500 crore, she said.

Kochhar said the bank was able to deliver the improvement on a strategy involving focus on recoveries (recoveries from NPAs were at Rs 550 crore for the reporting quarter), asking promoters to sell assets and reducing concentration of loans to problematic sectors like power which inched down one percentage point to 6 per cent of the book.
It restructured Rs 1,962 crore of assets during the reporting quarter taking the total restructured book to Rs 12,604 crore, but Kochhar said there are no major pipeline of loan recasts as it has done a bulk of it in the first quarter.

On the outlook on the asset stress, Kochhar said it depends on how the economy moves ahead but declined comment on how she sees the macro situation and the economic recovery.
She said the bank is confident of containing the credit losses to under one per cent of the book for FY16.
The bank's scrip gained 3.97 per cent to close at Rs 302.50 apiece on the BSE, as against the 1.48 per cent gains in the benchmark Sensex.
Its gross non performing assets ratio improved to 3.68 per cent as against 3.78 per cent in March.
On the margins front, it reported 0.14 per cent improvement to 3.54 per cent, primarily driven by 0.30 per cent gain on the international book constituting 24 per cent of the book on better liquidity management. The bank is confident of maintaining the margins, she said.

The share of the low-cost CASA deposits improved to 41.1 per cent on a daily average basis from 39.5 per cent.