MUMBAI (Reuters) - ICICI Bank Ltd, India's biggest private sector lender by assets, beat analyst estimates with a 10 percent increase in quarterly net profit, but reported a worsening of asset quality, with the share of bad loans rising.
Indian banks have been hurt by two years of slower economic growth that led to projects being stalled and corporate balance sheets getting stretched. Demand for loans from companies has yet to pick up, although consumer loans are growing fast.
ICICI, which is also listed in New York, said net profit rose to 29.22 billion rupees ($458.9 million) for its fiscal fourth quarter to end-March, from 26.52 billion rupees a year earlier.
Analysts on average had expected the lender to report a net profit of 28.65 billion rupees.
Gross bad loans ratio increased to 3.78 percent in the March quarter, compared with 3.40 percent in the third quarter. The bank's provisions for bad loans jumped 88 percent from a year earlier, to 13.45 billion rupees.
Net interest income, the difference between interest earned and paid, grew 17 percent on year in the March quarter to 50.79 billion rupees. Retail loans grew 25 percent annually, faster than an 18 percent growth in total credit demand for the bank.
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ICICI Bank shares were trading down 2 percent after the results, while the Mumbai market index was down 0.9 percent.
($1=63.6700 rupees)
(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Writing by Sumeet Chatterjee; Editing by Anand Basu and Clarence Fernandez)