SBI profit jumps 41% to ₹6,797 crore in Q3 on lower provisioning

The country’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) on Friday (January 31) reported a 41% jump in net profit to ₹6,797.25 crore in the October-December quarter this fiscal compared to ₹4,823.29 crore in the year-ago period.

Consolidated income rose to ₹95,384.28 crore in the third quarter from ₹84,390.14 crore in October-December 2018-19, SBI said in a regulatory filing.

On asset front, the lender showed improvement with the gross Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) falling to 6.94% of the gross advances as of December 31, 2019 from 8.71% by same period in 2018. The net NPAs dropped to 2.65% from 3.95%.

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On a standalone basis, net profit jumped 41.2% to ₹5,583.36 crore in the third quarter of the current fiscal compared to ₹3,954.81 crore during the corresponding October-December period in the same period a year ago.

“This is also the highest ever quarterly net profit recorded by the bank,” SBI said. Income (standalone) of the bank rose to ₹76,797.91 crore as against ₹70,311.84 crore in same period of 2018-19.

During the quarter, the bank exercised the option of lower tax rate taking a one-time hit of ₹1,333 crore. “Excluding the impact of this one-time additional hit, net profit in Q3FY20 would have been ₹6,916 crore against ₹3,955 crore in Q3FY19,” SBI said.

The provisioning for bad loans (standalone) too came down to ₹8,193.06 crore for the third quarter of 2019-20 from ₹13,970.82 crore parked aside for a year ago period.
SBI shares were trading 2.14% higher at ₹317.35 on BSE.

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