Federal Bank fourth-quarter profit slides, misses forecast

(Reuters) - India's Federal Bank Ltd reported on Wednesday a 43 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit, hurt by higher provisions for bad loans.

Net profit was 1.45 billion rupees ($21.55 million) for the three months ended March 31, compared with 2.57 billion rupees a year ago, the mid-sized private-sector lender said in a statement https://www.bseindia.com/xml-data/corpfiling/AttachLive/e405cb04-1b1f-4c48-9959-5b06618be70b.pdf.

Analysts had on average expected the lender to post a net profit of 2.87 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans rose to 3 percent at end-March, compared with 2.52 percent in the preceding quarter and 2.33 percent a year ago.

($1 = 67.2725 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair)