HDFC Bank Q3 net up 20 percent as expected, bad loans rise

MUMBAI (Reuters) - HDFC Bank Ltd, India's second-biggest private sector lender by assets, said its quarterly net profit rose by a fifth, broadly in line with analysts' estimates.

The bank's bad loans also rose.

Net profit rose to 33.57 billion rupees ($495 million) for its fiscal third quarter to Dec. 31, from 27.95 billion rupees reported a year earlier, HDFC Bank said in a statement on Monday.

Analysts on average had expected a net profit of 33.61 billion rupees, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters.

Gross non-performing loans as a percentage of total loans rose to 0.97 percent in the December quarter from 0.91 percent in the previous three months.

 

($1 = 67.7800 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)