Mumbai: State Bank of India, India's largest lender, beat expectations with a 25 percent rise in quarterly profit on Friday and a drop in its closely monitored bad debt ratio, predicting an improvement ahead. SBI, which has been tightening scrutiny of borrowers and increasing fund recovery efforts, said gross bad loans as a proportion of total loans dipped to 4.15 percent in July-September from 4.29 in the previous three months. SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said the economy needed to grow faster to secure stable asset quality, but forecast improvements ahead for the bank, a bellwether for the industry.
Mumbai: Punjab National Bank, India's fourth-biggest state lender by assets, missed forecasts with an 8 percent rise in quarterly profit on Friday, but cheered investors with a quarter-on-quarter improvement in its bad loans.
Net profit rose to Rs 6.2 billion ($94.2 million) for its second quarter to Sept 30, from Rs 5.75 billion a year earlier. Analysts on average had expected a net profit of Rs 8.98 billion,according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters.
Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans fell slightly to 6.36 percent from 6.47 percent in the previous three months, though higher than 5.65 percent a year earlier.
Shares in the bank climbed on the numbers, trading up 4.2 percent by around 0700 GMT.
New Delhi: Automaker Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd reported a 2.4 percent drop in its second-quarter net profit on Friday after sales fell, but the automaker said it expects an economic recovery to boost demand for the rest of the year.
Mahindra, India's top utility vehicle maker, said in a statement its net profit for the three months ending Sept. 30 was Rs 9.24 billion ($140.5 million), down from Rs 9.47 billion a year earlier. "With investment sentiment picking up and tail winds from falling interest rates likely to bolster urban consumption demand further, we expect growth to step up pace in the second half of the current fiscal year," Mahindra said in the statement.
Mumbai: Bank of Baroda Ltd, India's second-biggest state-run lender by assets, posted on Friday an unexpectedly sharp 89 percent tumble in its quarterly net profit, hit by a spike in bad loans and higher provisions for impaired assets.
Net profit at Bank of Baroda, which in August became one of the first state-owned lenders to appoint a boss from the private sector, fell to Rs 1.24 billion ($18.9 million) in the quarter ended September 30, from Rs 11.04 billion reported a year earlier, the Mumbai-based lender said in a statement.
The bank's gross bad loan ratio for the quarter rose to 5.56 percent, a jump from 4.13 percent in the previous three months and 3.32 percent in the same quarter a year earlier.
Bank of Baroda's provisions for problem loans in the July-September quarter more than doubled to Rs 18.9 billion, which included 25 percent of a credit account worth Rs 3.74 billion that was declared as fraud by the bank, it said.
New Delhi: Tata Motors Ltd on Friday reported a Rs 4.3 billion ($65.4 million) net loss in the July to September quarter, dragged down by weaker sales in China and a one-time loss related to vehicles damaged in a port explosion.
Tata said in a statement it had booked a Rs 24.93-billion charge after a chemical blast in the Chinese port of Tianjin in August destroyed or damaged thousands of vehicles made by its Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) business.
The company said its consolidated profit before tax and exceptional items slid to Rs 15.4 billion from Rs 56.4 billion a year earlier, reflecting weaker sales in China, once its fastest growing market, and foreign exchange moves.
Strong sales of its JLR cars, especially in China, have long propped up profits at Tata Motors, but the company has been struggling with sluggish demand in emerging markets in the last couple of years.
Chinese sales fell 32 percent in its fiscal second quarter as an economic slowdown hit the world's biggest car market.
