Andhra Bank profit up 36.7%

Andhra Bank posted net profit of Rs 116.41 crore for the quarter ended June 30 2006, up 36.7 per cent compared with Rs 85.16 crore in the corresponding quarter in the previous year.

It's total income increased by 24.09 per cent to Rs 861.75 crore in the quarter from Rs 694.43 crore in the year-ago quarter.

"Increase in low-cost deposits, stringent pricing norms and enhanced fee-based income added to our numbers," said K Ramakrishnan, chairman.

He said, at present, the bank was working on hiking its interest rates, which became imminent after the recent repo rates hike by the RBI.

Announcing the results on Friday, Ramakrishnan said low-cost deposits grew to Rs 12,466 crore during the period, up 26.46 per cent compared with Rs 9,858 crore for the corresponding period last year.

Similarly, the bank's interest income increased by 23.11 per cent to Rs 759.90 crore as against Rs 617.23 crore for June 2005. Its operating profit grew to Rs 206.50 crore as against Rs 160 crore, recording a growth of 28.98 per cent.

Ramakrishnan said the net non-performing assets (NPAs) of the bank during the period stood at Rs 16 crore (0.07 per cent) compared with Rs 68 crore (0.38 per cent). Total deposits grew by 28.85 per cent to Rs 33,058 crore from Rs 25,657 crore.

Capital adequacy ratio improved to 14.38 per cent. Earnings per share (not annualised) stood at Rs 2.40 against Rs 2.13.

He said the bank had made full provision of one per cent pursuant to the change in higher provisioning requirement in specified sectors of standard assets from 0.4 per cent to one per cent by the RBI.

An additional provision of Rs 104.65 crore was also held as on June 30, 2006, in respect of gross NPAs over and above the prudential provision required under RBI norms.

Stating that the bank was introducing one new product every month, he said that it would be shortly introducing the facility of booking railway tickets on the net to its customers.