ICICI Bank net profit up 21 percent, meets forecasts

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's No.2 lender, ICICI Bank, posted a 21 percent rise in fourth-quarter net profit, in line with estimates, led by higher loan growth, it said on Friday.

The bank posted a net profit of about 23 billion rupees for the January-March quarter, compared with 19.02 billion rupees a year earlier. Net interest income, or the difference between income earned and interest expended, rose 22.5 percent to nearly 38 billion rupees.

Analysts, on average, had estimated net profit of 22.84 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net non-performing loans at the bank stood at 0.77 percent of its total assets compared with 0.73 percent a year earlier.

 

Net interest margin, a key gauge of profitability for banks, stood at 3.11 percent for the year-ended March compared with 2.73 percent a year ago, it said in a statement.

(Reporting by Swati Pandey; Editing by Matt Driskill)