SBI Card doubles its profit as its customers increase spends by 80% – but FY23 off to a slow start

• SBI Card, the second largest credit card issuer in India, reported a 106% year-on-year increase in profit in Q1 FY23.
• The SBI group company also revealed that its overall customer spends increased by 80%, while new accounts surged 48%.
• Despite the positive results, the card issuer is off to a slow start in FY23 across spends, cards and transactions.

SBI Card, one of the leading credit card issuers in India, announced its June quarter results with a healthy increase in profit to ₹627 crore, more than doubling from ₹305 crore a year ago.

It also announced a 33% surge in its revenue to ₹3,263 crore, while its interest income grew by a more modest 20% to ₹1,387 crore.

SBI Card is currently the second largest credit card issuer in India, with a market share of 18.4%, behind HDFC Bank, which has a 22.4% share, reveals the latest report by the Reserve Bank of India.


Source: Company reports

The overall positivity in its numbers is also reflected by another key metric –spends of its credit card holders.

According to SBI Card’s exchange filing, while the company managed to add 48% new accounts in Q1 FY23 along with a 19% increase in its active credit cards to 14.3 million, the total credit card spends grew 79% to ₹59,671 crore in the April-June 2022 period.

Net non-performing assets, another key metric for financial services companies, declined to 0.79% in this period, from 0.88% a year ago.

Interestingly, corporate spends grew at a much faster rate than retail spends – while corporate customers increased their spends at 16%, retail customer spends increased only 9% sequentially. Despite the slowdown, retail spends contribute the most, being 3x higher than corporate spends.

On the other hand, the increase in provisions was relatively modest at 5% sequentially, to ₹503 crore.

Despite the positivity, growth outlook lower

Although the numbers so far paint a positive picture, SBI Card’s growth outlook remains a little dull.

According to the company, its FY23 has kicked off at a slower pace, with its share across cards issued, spends and transactions all declining when compared to the previous two years.

It remains to be seen if the company’s projections for the rest of FY23 improve.

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