India's largest bank reports a sharp fall in bad loans — enough for the street to ignore the 7% fall in profit

Country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) on Thursday posted nearly 7 per cent fall in its standalone net profit at Rs 5,196.22 crore for the third quarter ended December. The bank had posted net profit of Rs 5,583.36 crore in the October-December period of the previous fiscal.

Total income (standalone) also fell marginally to Rs 75,980.65 crore during Q3FY21, as against Rs 76,797.91 crore in the same period of 2019-20, SBI said in a regulatory filing.

On a consolidated basis, the bank posted a 5.8 fall in net profit at Rs 6,402.16 crore during the quarter under review, as against Rs 6,797.25 crore in the year-ago period.

The bank's asset quality improved substantially as the gross non-performing assets fell to 4.77 per cent of the gross advances as of December 31, 2020 from 6.94 per cent in the corresponding period a year ago.

In value terms, the gross NPAs or bad loans stood at Rs 1,17,244.23 crore, as against Rs 1,59,661.19 crore.

Likewise, the net NPAs were down 1.23 per cent at Rs 29,031.72 crore, as against 2.65 per cent (at Rs 58,248.61 crore).

Provisions for bad loans and contingencies for the quarter spiked to Rs 10,342.39 crore, from Rs 7,252.90 crore a year earlier.

The shares of SBI were trading 2.02 per cent up at Rs 342.65 apiece on BSE.

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