SBBJ Q3 net profit jumps 26% at Rs 206 cr

State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBJ) today reported a 26.16 per cent rise in its net profit at Rs 206.13 crore for the December quarter on higher income from retail operations and fall in bad loans.

The SBI associate SBBJ had registered a net profit of Rs 163.39 crore in the October-December quarter of the previous fiscal.

Total income of the bank increased to Rs 2,636.56 crore for the third quarter ended December 2015-16 from Rs 2,476.69 crore earned in the same quarter of 2014-15, it said in a BSE filing.

Bank's income from retail banking operations shot by 52.6 per cent to Rs 1,517.28 crore during the quarter.

Net interest income (NII) rose by 16.25 per cent to Rs 869.09 crore for the quarter under review, as against Rs 747.60 crore a year ago.

Also, the net interest margin (NIM), a key gauge of profitability, improved by 6 basis points, or 0.06 per cent, to 3.53 per cent as on December 2015 from 3.47 per cent a year ago.

On the asset quality front, bank's gross non-performing assets (NPAs) or bad loans slightly improved to 4.22 per cent of gross advances during the quarter from 4.38 per cent a year earlier.

Net NPAs were trimmed to 2.2 per cent of net advances from 2.64 per cent.

The bank had made provisioning of Rs 236.20 crore for bad loans and contingencies for October-December period of 2015-16, as against Rs 244.51 crore in the same period a year ago.

"...Despite pressure on the NPA front, the bank has posted an impressive performance in third quarter of current financial year.

"The bank has achieved consistent growth with its business level reaching a figure of Rs 1.62 lakh crore, an increase of 9.53 per cent over the corresponding period last year," SBBJ MD Jyoti Ghosh said in the statement.

Scrips of the bank closed 2.66 per cent lower, at Rs 485.60 apiece on the BSE.