Kotak Bank Q2 net jumps 27.6% on better margins, NPAs inch up

Private sector lender Kotak Mahindra Bank today reported a 27.65 per cent rise in September quarter net at Rs 1,202.40 crore on a healthy increase in net interest margins.
The city-based lender, which merged with the South-focussed ING Vysya Bank last year to become the fourth largest private sector lender, had reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 941.89 crore in the year-ago period.
On a standalone basis, net profit grew 43 per cent to Rs 813 crore in the reporting quarter.
Joint Managing Director Dipak Gupta attributed the healthy rise in profit to an expansion in net interest margin to 4.47 per cent from 4.30 per cent in the year-ago period.

He said the drop in the cost of funds was faster than the yield on advances, which helped expand the margins.
However, he observed that the scope for further increase is limited, saying the bank has reached the peak which it used to clock during the pre-merger days.

The core net interest income increased 19 per cent to Rs 1,995 crore, while non-interest income moved up to Rs 831 crore from Rs 615.73 crore in the year-ago period.
Total advances grew 13 per cent to over Rs 1.26 trillion, which included a 15 per cent growth in corporate lending and 20 per cent in consumer lending, but commercial lending was flat, Gupta said.

Another factor that helped the bottom-line was the improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 49.7 per cent, in line with the guidance of bringing it under 50 per cent, he said.
An improvement in the proportion of the low-cost current and saving account deposits to 39 per cent also helped expand the margins.
Asked about the 'bad bank' which it had created at the
time of the merger, Gupta said the total assets under it were less than Rs 1,000 crore, but rued that the bank is facing difficulties in resolution.
The difficulties are being faced due to sluggish economic growth, which does not support asset revival and also due to lack of adequate legal means, he said.

The bank was also among those impacted by the recently discovered ATM cards fraud, Gupta said, adding that they had to resort to re-carding and changing PIN numbers for the customers at risk.
Gupta said the bank spotted trends on the frauds front early on and had to resort to measures, including barring use of cards at affected geographies like China.
"It's a very difficult choice for us but we had to do it for helping stop the fraud from going wider," he said.
The Kotak counter closed with a negative bias of 0.32 per cent at Rs 784.90 on the BSE whose benchmark also slipped 0.31 per cent.