BENGALURU (Reuters) – Indian private lender IndusInd Bank reported a bigger-than-expected jump in third-quarter profit on Wednesday, lifted by strong loan growth and a drop in provisions for bad loans.
The company’s standalone profit, which excludes results of unit Bharat Financial Inclusion, jumped 68.7% to 19.59 billion rupees ($241 million) in the three months ended Dec. 31.
Analysts were expecting a profit of 18.59 billion rupees, according to Refinitiv IBES data.
Provisions dropped 35.6% in the quarter, the Mumbai-based lender said in an exchange filing.
Indian lenders are expected to report strong numbers for the October-December quarter as lending picked up even amid a slew of central bank interest rate hikes.
On Saturday, HDFC Bank, India’s biggest private lender, reported a 18.5% jump in profit on healthy loan growth.
Earlier this month, IndusInd had also reported that its quarterly net advances increased 19% year-over-year and 5% sequentially.
The company, on Wednesday, said its gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans — a measure of asset quality — eased slightly to 2.06% at the end of December, from 2.11% at the end of September. ($1 = 81.2900 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Nallur Sethuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibilty for its content.