Punjab & Sind Bank (PSB), a public sector bank, on Saturday reported a 27.5 per cent increase in net profit for the second quarter ended September 30, 2022, at ₹278 crore (₹218 crore).
The latest bottomline was also higher than the net profit of ₹205 crore in the June 2022 quarter.
Total income for the quarter under review grew 7 per cent to ₹2,120 crore (₹1,975 crore), latest regulatory filing by the bank with the stock exchanges showed.
Operating profit grew 5.64 per cent to ₹318 crore (₹301 crore). In June 2022 quarter, operating profit was ₹252 crore.
H1 Profit rises 23%
For the six months ended September 30, 2022, PSB recorded a net profit of ₹483 crore, up 23 per cent over net profit of ₹392 crore recorded in same period last year.
PSB’s Gross Non-Performing Assets (NPA) declined to 9.67 per cent of gross advances as of end September 2022 from a level of 14.54 per cent in end September last year.
In value terms, gross NPA as of end September 2022 stood at ₹7,129 crore (₹9,823 crore). Net NPA declined to 2.24 per cent from 3.81 per cent in the second quarter last year.
It maybe recalled that PSB had in 2021-22 staged a turnaround and came into black with a net profit of ₹1,039 crore.
Speaking to businessline, Swarup Kumar Saha, MD &CEO, PSB, said that the main drivers for the latest bottomline performance are improvement in operating profit performance (sequentially), besides strong bad loan recovery in the quarter under review.
Sequentially the recovery has gone up from ₹ 383 crore in Q1 to ₹ 505 crore in Q2.
Saha also said that the bank is in line to surpass the last year’s profit of ₹ 1039 crore. “We expect to close this fiscal with net profit of ₹ 1100-1200 crore”, he said. For the current fiscal, PSB is aiming at overall credit growth of 15 per cent on the back of strong push towards RAM segment (retail agriculture and MSME segment). Last fiscal, overall credit growth stood at 3.8 percent.