ICICI Bank third-quarter net profit dives 32 percent

(Reuters) - India's ICICI Bank's third-quarter profit plunged 32 percent, it said on Wednesday, lagging market expectations.

The bank, India's third-largest by assets, reported net profit of 16.5 billion rupees ($259.4 million) for the three months to Dec. 31, against 24.42 billion rupees in the same period a year earlier. (http://bit.ly/2ntQEyc)

That compared with the 19.54 billion rupees average profit estimate of 24 analysts, Thomson Reuters data shows.

Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans stood at 7.82 percent at the end of December, compared with 7.87 percent at Sept. 30 and 7.2 percent a year earlier.

($1 = 63.6000 Indian rupees)

 

(Reporting by Krishna V Kurup in Bengaluru; Editing by David Goodman)