Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) on Friday reported an over three-fold increase in net profit for the first quarter ended June 30 at Rs 100.69 crore.
The public sector lender had recorded a net profit of Rs 21.62 crore in previous quarter ended March 31, 2016.
The first quarter bottomline performance this fiscal is, however, much lower than the net profit of Rs 257.84 crore recorded in same quarter last year.
Total income for the quarter under review stood at Rs 5,392.70 crore, down 1.08 per cent over total income of Rs 5,451.60 crore.
It was also lower than the total income of Rs 5,568.78 crore in the first quarter last fiscal.
The first-quarter bottomline performance was bolstered by a sharp rise in treasury gains on a year-on-year basis and recoveries from bad debts that were written off.
While treasury gains for the quarter under review increased to Rs 162.63 crore (Rs 101.25 crore), bad debt written off earlier and recovered stood at Rs 146.49 crore ( Rs 60.47 crore ).
Provision for non-performing assets stood at Rs 960.93 crore as against Rs 596 crore in the same quarter last fiscal.
Commenting on the first-quarter performance, Animesh Chauhan, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, OBC, said it was a relatively better quarter, although concerns around slippages persisted.
For the quarter under review, total slippages stood at Rs 3,464 crore. The sectors that saw slippages were iron and steel (Rs 1,760 crore) and textiles (Rs 959 crore).
"Multiple factors, including higher CASA deposits, improved recoveries and treasury gains led to the slightly better first-quarter performance," Chauhan said.
He expressed confidence that OBC would surpass in this fiscal the bottomline performance of Rs 156 crore recorded last fiscal.
He also expects credit growth to increase to 10 per cent this fiscal from 6 per cent in the last fiscal.
For the quarter under review, net interest margin stood at 2.36 per cent, lower than the 2.65 per cent recorded in the same quarter in the last fiscal.
Chauhan sees the net interest margin for the entire current fiscal improving to 2.5 per cent.