ICICI Bank: Is the glass half full or half empty?

Lower slippages a positive, but doesn't still indicate tapering of asset quality woes

There could be two interpretations of ICICI Bank’s September quarter (Q2) results. A cursory look may disappoint given the 34 per cent year-on-year(y-o-y) decline in net profit to Rs 2,058 crore. This fell reasonably short of estimates (Rs 2,570 crore according to a Bloomberg poll of analysts), despite net interest income growing by 8.7 per cent y-o-y to Rs 5,709 crore in Q2. But, the impact of profit on sale of stake in its life insurance subsidiary (Rs 5,682 crore) has reasonably puffed up the year-ago quarter’s results. While Q2 numbers are also elevated by Rs 2,012 crore from profit