Axis Bank on Monday reported a 62 per cent year-on-year (YoY) surge in net profit at Rs 5,853 crore for the December quarter compared with Rs 3.614 crore in the same quarter last year. Net interest income (NII) for the quarter jumped 32 per cent YoY to Rs 11,459 crore, the bank said in a BSE filing. Net interest margin (NIM) for the quarter stood at 4.26 per cent, up 73 basis points (bps) YoY and 30 bps sequentially.
Fee, non-interest income
Axis Bank said fee income for the quarter rose 23 per cent YoY to Rs 4,101 crore; retail fees were up 30 per cent YoY and constituted 69 per cent of the bank’s total fee income. Retail assets (excluding cards and payments) fee grew 22 per cent YoY while retail cards and payments fee jumped 44 per cent YoY, the bank said.
The corporate & commercial banking fees together grew 8 per cent; trading gains for the quarter climbed 17 per cent YoY to Rs 428 crore, the bank said.
Non-interest income, which comprising of fee, trading profit and miscellaneous income) rose 21 per cent YoY to Rs 4,665 crore.
Provisions
The private lender made Rs 1,438 crore in provision and contingencies for the quarter. That included non-recurring, one-time prudent provisions of Rs 340 crore.
Specific loan loss provisions for the quarter, the bank said, stood at Rs 1,341 crore. The bank has not utilised Covid provisions during the quarter, Axis Bank informed BSE.
Overall, the bank holds cumulative provisions of Rs 5,012 crore at the end of December quarter.
“It is pertinent to note that this is over and above the NPA provisioning included in our PCR calculations. These cumulative provisions translate to a standard asset coverage of 1.53 per cent as of December 31, 2022. On an aggregated basis, our provision coverage ratio stands at 139 per cent of gross NPA as on December 31,” the bank said.
Asset quality
The bank said its Gross NPA for the quarter came in at 2.38 per cent against 2.5 per cent in the September quarter. Net NPA stood at 0.47 per cent against 0.51 per cent sequentially.
Gross slippages stand increased by Rs 410 crore on account of non-recurring or prudent items. This adversely impacted reported gross slippages by 22 bps, reported net slippages by 22 bps, reported gross NPA by 5 bps, reported net NPA by 1 bps. Gross slippages during the quarter were Rs 3,807 crore, compared with Rs 3,383 crore in September and Rs 4,147 crore in the year-ago quarter. Recoveries and upgrades from NPAs for the quarter came in at Rs 2,088 crore.
The bank said net slippages in NPAs (before write-offs) for the quarter stood at Rs 1,719 crore compared with Rs 557 crore in September and Rs 860 crore in the year-ago quarter. The net slippages in retail and CBG stood at Rs 1,355 crore and Rs 83 crore, respectively. Net slippages in the corporate segment stood at Rs 281 crore.
Mobile app
The bank said its mobile app continues to see strong growth, with monthly active users of 1.1 crore and nearly 68 lakh non-Axis Bank customers using Axis Mobile and Axis Pay apps.
“The bank has been among the first to go live on Account Aggregator (AA) network and has seen strong initial traction in AA based digital lending. The bank now has over 85+ partnerships across platforms and ecosystems and has 350+ APIs hosted on its API Developer Portal. On WhatsApp banking, the bank now has 89 lakh customers on board since its launch in 2021,” Axis Bank said.
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