ICICI Bank Q2 net zooms to record high

ICICI Bank on Saturday reported over four-fold jump in consolidated net profit at Rs 4,882 crore for September quarter driven largely by core income growth and lesser provisions for the pandemic-related impact.

In the year-ago quarter, the profit stood at Rs 1,131 crore. On a standalone basis, the second largest private sector lender's profit after tax jumped to Rs 4,251 crore as against Rs 655 crore in the year-ago period, which is the highest quarterly growth in its history. The core net interest income(NII) moved up 16 per cent to Rs 9,366 crore despite a 0.10 per cent contraction in the net interest margin (NIM) to 3.57 per cent and credit growth being nearly half that of deposit growth at 6 per cent. Its president Sandeep Batra attributed the high profit growth to NII, and credited the strategy of "risk calibrated growth" followed by the bank under new leadership over the last two years for delivering higher income.

NIM was lower because of the excess liquidity in the system, as the bank was not able to deploy the higher deposits it got for loans, the management said, making it clear that it will now be more open to lending across segments as the economic activity normalises, but follow the same strategy. Its overall provisions came at Rs 2,995 crore as against the Rs 2,506 crore in the year-ago period and the elevated Rs 7,593 crore in the preceding quarter.

Batra said after setting aside over Rs 8,700 crore, done majorly in the March and June quarters, for the possible impact of COVID-19, the bank now feels that the provisions made are sufficient to absorb the impact of the pandemic on asset quality. He added that the bank has not utilized any of the excess provisions made for the pandemic. The overall tax expenses reduced by over two-thirds to Rs 1,014 crore, which helped the bottomline.