ICICI Bank fourth-quarter profit dives 50 percent, bad loan provisions surge

(Reuters) - ICICI Bank Ltd, India's third-largest lender by assets, posted a near 50 percent drop in its fourth-quarter net profit as its provisions for bad loans surged.

Net profit for the three months to March 31 fell to 10.20 billion rupees ($151.94 million) from 20.25 billion rupees a year earlier, the bank said in a statement on Monday.

Twelve analysts on average had expected the company to post a net profit of 10.77 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans was 8.84 percent at the end of March, compared with 7.82 percent at the end of the previous quarter and 7.89 percent a year earlier.

($1 = 67.1300 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru)