MUMBAI (Reuters) - ICICI Bank Ltd, India's biggest private sector lender by assets, reported a marginally better-than-expected 12 percent rise in quarterly profit and said its bad-loan ratio fell sequentially, sending its shares more than 5 percent higher.
Net profit rose to 29.76 billion rupees ($465 million) for its fiscal first quarter to June 30, from 26.55 billion rupees reported a year earlier, the lender, which is also listed in New York , said in a statement.
Analysts on average had expected ICICI Bank to report a net profit of 29.2 billion rupees, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters.
Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans fell to 3.68 percent from 3.78 percent in the March quarter although they were higher than the 3.05 percent reported a year earlier.
Indian banks have seen their bad loans almost double in the past three years as a weak economy limited companies' ability to service debt. While the dominant state-run lenders account for the majority of the bad loans, private sector lenders like ICICI have also seen their troubled loans rise.
Brokerage Ambit said this week it expected the pressure on ICICI's asset quality to continue with fresh addition of bad loans and increased slippages from restructured loans.
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ICICI's first-quarter net interest income grew 14 percent over a year earlier, while non-interest income rose 5 percent . Net interest margin rose to 3.54 percent from 3.4 percent a year earlier.
Retail loans grew 25 percent, faster than the 15 percent increase in overall credit.
Shares in ICICI Bank were trading 5.8 percent higher by 12:35 IST GMT in a Mumbai market that gained 1.26 percent. The stock has underperformed the bank Nifty and the Nifty this year.
($1 = 64.0000 rupees)
(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu and Muralikumar Anantharaman)