ICICI Bank Q2 net rises 22% to 1,503 cr

MUMBAI: ICICI Bank, the largest private sector bank in India, said on Monday that its net profit for the quarter ended September 2011 (Q2FY12) rose 21.6% to Rs 1,503 crore, compared to Rs 1,240 crore during the quarter ended September 2010. The strong rise in net profits, that beat analysts expectations, came on the back of higher demand for loans and lower provisions for bad assets, the bank said.
The bank's net interest income (NII), the difference between income from loans it has given to customers and expenditure on clients' funds it has, went up by nearly 14% to 2,510 crore.It also witnessed higher demand for loans from companies, home buyers and car buyers, and its fee income from distributing insurance and mutual-fund products also increased. The bank said advances increased by 20% to Rs 2.34 lakh crore during second quarter.
The bank said its net non-performing assets (NPAs) fell 30% to Rs 2,240 crore from the year-ago period.
It said it was monitoring its loans to the power sector, which, of late, has been witnessing a rapid rise in bad loans as project execution has slowed because of environmental clearances and difficulty in securing fuel (coal and gas). "While we are monitoring each project in power sector closely, we have had no slippages, we are not overly worried. We are comfortable about the quality of projects that we have selected in the power sector," Kochhar said during a post-results conference. I don't expect any great improvement but I don't expect any major shock to NPAs as well," she told reporters on a conference call.
In Monday's relatively weak market, the stock price of ICICI Bank closed a marginal 0.3% lower at Rs 931, compared to a 0.7% rise in BSE's banking index.