Private Axis Bank's Q4 net dives 43% to `1,225 crore

Axis Bank on Wednesday reported 43% decline in net profit to Rs 1,225.10 crore for the fourth quarter of last fiscal ended March 31 on higher provisioning for bad loans, which rose sharply.

The country's third largest private sector lender had posted a net profit of Rs 2,154.28 crore for the January-March quarter of the previous fiscal, 2015-16. Its total income increased however to Rs 14,181.31 crore in the fourth quarter of 2016-17 as against Rs 13,592.97 crore in the year-ago period. The bank's gross non-performing assets (NPAs) or bad loans rose significantly to 5.04% of the gross advances as of March this year, as against 1.67% a year earlier.

Net NPAs were 2.11% of the net advances during the quarter, as against 0.70%. Consequently, provisioning more than doubled to Rs 2,581.25 crore for bad loans and contingencies from Rs 1,168.33 crore in the same quarter a year ago. As on March 2017, the bank's provision coverage, as a proportion of gross NPAs including prudential write-offs, improved to 65%, from 64% as on December 31, 2016. During the quarter, additions to gross NPA were Rs 4,811 crore, recoveries and upgrades were Rs 2,804 crore.