Despite a 18.96 per cent decline in net profit during the fourth quarter, Karnataka Bank’s profit in fiscal 2012-13 grew 41.45 per cent.
The bank recorded a net profit of Rs 67.39 crore in the fourth quarter of 2012-13 against Rs 83.16 crore in the year-ago period.
P. Jayarama Bhat, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the bank, attributed the decline to higher provisioning in the fourth quarter.
The provision coverage ratio has gone up from 47.18 per cent to 55.36 per cent, he said.
The provision for income-tax came to around Rs 31 crore (Rs 23 crore). With this, the total provision went up to Rs 86 crore, he said.
FY13 performance
However, the bank posted a net profit of Rs 348.08 crore in 2012-13 as against Rs 246.07 crore in the previous year, a growth of 41.45 per cent.
Terming this net profit as an all-time high, Bhat attributed it to the growth in advances and good recovery in NPAs (non-performing assets).
“We could reduce the NPAs. We made a total recovery of around Rs 459 crore during the year.
“Of that, we sold assets worth around Rs 100 crore to asset reconstruction companies, and made real recoveries of around Rs 175 crore,” he said, adding that accounts of Rs 75 crore were upgraded and gross NPAs were brought down from Rs 684 crore to Rs 634 crore. Bhat said the bank wants to reduce the gross NPAs to around 2 per cent and net NPAs to below 1 per cent during 2013-14. The bank has set a business growth target of 28 per cent during the current fiscal.
DIVIDEND
The board of directors has recommended a dividend of 40 per cent.
This works out to Rs 4 per equity share. On Wednesday, the Karnataka Bank scrip closed at Rs 159.95 on the BSE, up 2.99 per cent over the previous close of Rs 155.30