Canara Bank PAT up 2%

BS 200 scorecard

Canara Bank's net profit for the third quarter ended December 2006 was nearly flat, as its investments depreciated by Rs 185 crore.

The bank's net profit for the December 2006 quarter was Rs 363 crore, up 2 per cent from Rs 356 crore in the corresponding period last year.

The bank has deployed about 60 per cent of its Rs 25,000 crore investments in government bonds and other securities held as 'available for sale', which are required to be valued at the market price.

The other reason for the pressure on profits was the high cost of funds raised in recent months. The bank raised a little over Rs 2,000 crore during the third quarter of the current financial year. 
 

Rs crore	Quarter ended Dec		% chg
	2005	2006
Interest earned	2240.07	2961.36	32.20
Other income	311.15	299.30	-3.81
Total income	2551.22	3260.66	27.81
Expenditure	1852.04	2559.65	38.21
Operating profit	699.18	701.01	0.26
Net profit	356.29	363.02	1.89
EPS (Rs)	8.69	8.85	1.84
CAR (%)	12.05	12.69

Canara Bank's return on assets on an annualised basis declined to 0.95 per cent from 1.16 per cent in the third quarter of the last year.

M B N Rao, chairman and managing director of Canara Bank, said: "Continued focus on prudent credit management led to further containment of the bank's NPAs. Net NPA ratio declined from 1.2 per cent in December 2005 to 0.96 per cent in December 2006."

The bank's cash recovery continued to be robust, aggregating Rs 653 crore during the first nine months of 2006-07. With gross NPA down by 15 per cent to Rs 1,873 crore from Rs 2,204 crore a year ago, gross NPA ratio declined to 2.06 per cent.

Capital to risk-weighted assets ratio as in December 2006 stood at 12.69 per cent compared with 11.22 per cent as in March 2006 as a result of raising $250 million tier-II capital from the global market.