Bank of Maharashtra Q1 net up 106% at Rs 208 crore

State-run Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) on Thursday reported a 106 percent jump in its standalone net profit at Rs 208 crore in the quarter ended June 2021, helped by improvement in asset quality and on higher net interest income.

The lender had reported a profit after tax of Rs 101 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal.

The bank's managing director and CEO A S Rajeev told reporters that despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the bank had shown good performance in all the key financial parameters.

He expects the bank to exhibit strong performance in the future also.

Net interest income (NII) increased by 29 percent to Rs 1,406 crore from Rs 1,088 crore last year.

Its net interest margin (NIM) improved to 3.05 percent as against 2.43 percent.

Rajeev said the bank will continue to keep NIM above three percent in the current financial year.

The bank saw improvement in asset quality with gross non-performing assets (GNPA) declining to 6.35 percent in the reporting quarter from 10.93 percent.

Net NPA also reduced to 2.22 percent from 4.10 percent in June 2020 quarter.

The lender expects GNPA to be below 6 percent and NNPA below 2 percent in FY22, Rajeev said.

Fresh slippages of the bank were to the tune of Rs 840 crore.

Recovery and up-gradation during the quarter stood at Rs 649 crore as against Rs 156 crore.

The provision coverage ratio improved to 90.70 percent as against 85.62 percent.

During the quarter, the bank made a Covid-19 provision of Rs 285 crore. Bank holds cumulative Covid-19 provision including interest of Rs 973 crore.

Under the RBI's Resolution Framework 2.0, the bank restructured Rs 1,487 crore of loans as of June 30, 2021.

Rajeev expects another Rs 500-600 crore of restructuring requests to come in the current quarter.

Gross advances grew by 14 percent to Rs 1,10,592 crore and total deposits rose by 14 percent to Rs 1,74,378 crore in the April-June quarter.

RAM (Retail, Agriculture, and MSME) business grew by 16 percent on a yo-y basis.

Retail advances grew by 19 percent to Rs 28,871 crore and MSME advances were up by 18 percent to Rs 21,707 crore.

The bank expects a credit growth of 14-15 percent in FY22.

On the recent stay by NCLAT on sale of Videocon group companies to Vedanta's Twin Star Technologies on an appeal by Bank of Maharashtra, Rajeev said, ''We have gone to NCLAT basically because of the low resolution (value) and have taken it up with the court. Based on the court's prudence, we will go ahead with that.'' He, however, declined to give any further comments on the case as it was sub-judice.

The bank's scrip closed at Rs 23.10 apiece, down 2.33 percent on BSE on Thursday.