Canara Bank Q3 net climbs 26%

Bangalore-based public sector Canara Bank today reported a 26.4 per cent rise in net profit to Rs 459 crore during the third quarter ended December 31, 2007, compared with the corresponding quarter of the last financial year.

A lower allocation towards provisions and contingencies during the quarter added to the rise in net profit. The bank has made a provision of Rs 199 crore compared to Rs 247.72 crore in the third quarter of last year.

The bank's operating profit for the period, however, rose by just 10.49 per cent to Rs 758 crore compared to the year ago period.

Total income rose by 26.22 per cent to Rs 4,096.60 crore on a y-o-y basis. It was boosted by a massive rise in other income during the quarter, which went up by 92 per cent to Rs 546.44 crore compared to the same period last year. 
 

Rs crore	2006	2007
Interest earned	2,961.36	3,550.16
Other income	299.30	546.44
Expenditure	2,559.65	3,338.77
PBT	701.01	757.83
Net profit	363.02	458.83
CAR (%)	12.69	13.66
NP(%)	12.26	12.92
Source: BSE

Net interest income for the quarter, however, has seen a decline of 10 per cent to Rs 935 crore compared to the same period last year.

Chairman and Managing Director M B N Rao said, "We have maintained a sustained healthy growth under interest income from core lending operations. We have also rebalanced our business portfolio both under assets and liabilities by reducing high cost deposits and low yielding corporate loans during the year as part of the conscious business strategy."

The bank has shed high cost deposits worth Rs 10,000 crore during the second and third quarters of the current financial year, Rao told reporters here. During the third quarter, Canara Bank has maintained a healthy return on assets ratio of 1.08 per cent compared to 0.95 per cent in the corresponding period of last fiscal. The bank's capital adequacy ratio has gone up to 13.66 per cent compared to 12.69 per cent last year.

The earnings per share has moved up to Rs 11.19 from Rs 8.85 per share in the corresponding quarter.

The bank's asset quality has shown improvement during the period. It has been able to reduce gross non performing assets to Rs 1,524.82 crore from Rs 1,873.5 crore in the third quarter last year. The percentage of net non-performing assets has marginally dipped to 0.89 per cent from 0.96 per cent.