The bank could show an increase in its bottomline only because of a change in the accounting policy for charging depreciation and thanks to this change, net profit burgeoned by Rs.43 crore. And based on this, the Bank goes on to declare that it recorded the highest ever first quarter net profit of Rs.127 crore, up 10% YoY. But for this depreciation advantage, the Bank’s net profit for the quarter would have been down at Rs.84 crore, a decline of 27%. NII showed a dull growth of 4% at Rs.341 crore.

Sequentially, asset quality has come down. Gross NPA for the quarter was at 1.5% v/s 1.19% in Q4 and net NPA also rose from 0.78% to 0.91%. Provisioning has also gone up from Rs.28 crore in Q4 to Rs.95 crore in current Q1, up over 3 times; YoY it was down 9%.

The only good part currently is that CAR is much above the required 9% at 12.32% as per Basel II and 12.19% as per Basel III, though this too has come down sequentially from 12.53% and 12.42% respectively.

The bank currently has 800 branches and in current fiscal, is targeting a total business of Rs.1 lakh crore and addition of 50 more branches.