 "PNB reports net profit of Rs 506 cr in Dec quarter; bad loans down")
State-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) on Friday reported a standalone net profit of Rs 506.03 crore for the December quarter on the back of a reduction in bad assets.
It had posted a net loss of Rs 492.28 crore in the year-ago period.
Total income in the quarter under review rose to Rs 23,298.53 crore as against Rs 15,967.49 crore earlier, PNB said in a regulatory filing.
Net interest income grew by 28 per cent to Rs 8,313 crore. Also, total expenditure of the bank fell by 10.9 per cent to Rs 16,908 crore.
Provisions for bad loans and contingencies stood at Rs 5,432.60 crore for the October-December period of 2020-21, higher than Rs 4,146.04 crore parked aside for the year-ago period.
On a consolidated basis, there was a profit of Rs 585.77 crore during the latest quarter. The lender had posted a net loss of Rs 501.93 crore in the same period of 2019-20.
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Consolidated income increased to Rs 23,639.41 crore from Rs 16,211.24 crore.
However, PNB said the current results are not comparable with the year-ago period because the December quarter 2019-20 figures are of the pre-amalgamated period.
With effect from April 1, 2020, PNB merged United Bank of India (UBI) and Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) with itself.
The bank witnessed substantial improvement on the asset quality front, with gross non-performing assets (NPAs) as a percentage of gross advances falling to 12.99 per cent as of December-end 2020 from 16.30 per cent earlier.
In absolute value terms, gross NPAs stood at Rs 94,479.33 crore as against Rs 76,809.20 crore.
The net NPA ratio also softened to 4.03 per cent (Rs 26,598.13 crore) from 7.18 per cent (Rs 30,518.92 crore).
The bank's global business has reached Rs 18,09,587 crore and global NIM (net interest margin) improved to 3.09 per cent in Q3FY21, PNB said in a release.
The bank said the achievement under priority sector sector credit was 42.4 per cent at Rs 2.84 lakh crore by the end of December 2020.
For agriculture sector, the achievement was 18.59 per cent at Rs 1.25 lakh crore and that for small and marginal farmers, it was 8.01 per cent at Rs 53,623 crore. Achievement under credit to weaker sections was 11.04 per cent at Rs 73,933 crore.
With a total of 10,925 branches across India, PNB has two overseas branches -- Hong Kong and Dubai.
The lender said that all the branches of the erstwhile OBC and UBI's core banking solution (CBS) have been upgraded from Finacle 7 to Finacle 10 and are integrated with PNB. More than 18 crore customers of PNB 2.0 are now on same platform, it added.
The bank's domestic deposits fell marginally to Rs 10.52 lakh crore, even as advances were slightly up at Rs 7.04 lakh crore.
On its financial inclusion initiatives, bank said as many as 3.94 crore accounts have been opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana as of December 2020 with average balance of Rs 4,021.
PNB stock closed 0.9 per cent down at Rs 40.10 on BSE.
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