SBI records historic net profit in FY20 on stake sale in subsidiaries; Q4 net jumps over 4-fold

State Bank of India on Friday posted over four-fold jump in standalone net profit at Rs 3,581 crore for March quarter, 2019-20 mainly on account of stake sale in its credit card subsidiary and fall in bad loans. The country's largest lender clocked a net profit of Rs 838.44 crore in January-March period of 2018-19.

However, the profit during the fourth quarter of 2019-20 was down sequentially.The profit in December quarter was Rs 5,583.36 crore, SBI said in a regulatory filing. "Bank registered a net profit of Rs 3,581 crore in Q4FY20, an increase of 327 per cent over Q4FY19," it said.

"For the full year FY20, net profit stood at Rs 14,488 crore against net profit of Rs 862 crore in FY19. This is also the highest ever yearly net profit recorded by the bank," SBI said in a release. The stake sale in SBI Cards and Payment Services and SBI Life Insurance Company helped the bank record its highest ever net profit in 2019-20.  The standalone income during March quarter of the last fiscal rose to Rs 76,027.51 crore from Rs 75,670.50 crore in the year-ago period, the filing said.

In 2019-20, the bank's income grew to Rs 2,96,329.43 crore as against Rs 2,78,082.99 crore in the preceding fiscal. SBI said exceptional items during 2019-20 included net profit of Rs 3,484.30 crore on sale of certain portion of investment in bank's subsidiary SBI Life Insurance in the second quarter and net profit of Rs 2,731.34 crore on sale of certain portion of investment in SBI Cards and Payment Services in March quarter.  On asset quality front, the bank showed improvement with gross non performing assets (NPAs) falling to 6.15 per cent of the gross advances as on March 31, 2020 as against 7.53 per cent by the year-ago same period.  Net NPAs or bad loans too were trimmed to 2.23 per cent from 3.01 per cent.

Thus, provisioning for bad loans and contingencies for the fourth quarter came down to Rs 13,495.08 crore from Rs 16,501.89 crore parked aside for the year-ago same period. SBI said it has made an investment of Rs 6,050 crore in Yes Bank which constitutes 48.21 per cent of the equity capital post investment.

SBI stock closed 7.90 per cent higher at Rs 187.80 on BSE..

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