Karur Vysya Bank Q4 profit up 19 pc at Rs 60 cr

Karur Vysya Bank Wednesday reported a rise of 18.7 per cent in March quarter net profit at Rs 60.02 due to healthy income from retail banking even as bad loans spiked.

The bank clocked a profit of Rs 50.56 crore during the corresponding January-March period of 2017-18, as per a regulatory filing.

Total income in the latest quarter rose to Rs 1,746.04 crore from Rs 1,699.53 crore in the year-ago period. Income from retail banking was higher 4.6 per cent to Rs 967.23 crore.

For full 2018-19 financial year, the bank posted a decline of 39 per cent in net profit at Rs 210.87 crore as against Rs 345.67 crore in 2017-18, it said.

Income during the year increased to Rs 6,778.59 crore from Rs 6,599.58 crore in 2017-18.

Bank's asset quality deteriorated during the year with gross non-performing assets (NPAs) hitting 8.79 per cent of gross advances as on March 31, 2019, as against 6.56 per cent by end-March 2018.

Net NPAs rose to 4.98 per cent from 4.16 per cent.

In absolute value, gross NPAs were Rs 4,449.57 crore by end of 2018-19, compared to Rs 3,015.76 crore a year ago. Net NPAs amounted to Rs 2,420.34 crore as against Rs 1,862.83 crore earlier.

Even though bad assets were on the rise, the provision for bad loans and contingencies for March 2019 quarter came down to Rs 352.34 crore from Rs 394.17 crore a year ago.

During March quarter 2019, the bank issued Basel III compliant tier II bonds to the tune of Rs 487 crore, it said.

The bank also informed that "since the divergence for the year 2017-18 is lower than the threshold prescribed (by RBI), no disclosure on divergence in asset classification and provisioning for NPAs is required with respect to RBI's annual supervisory process."