Bank of Baroda is the top loser on the bourses currently, down 7.5% at Rs.148 levels, firmly seeped in the red.

The Bank was not expected to post a turnaround in current Q1 and the precipitous fall in bottomline and asset quality was as per most estimates. But what did come as a shocker was that the Bank continued to make higher provisioning, which after the dismal Q4 was expected to have actually come down. Yes, sequentially provisioning has come down 71% at Rs.2004 crore but YoY, it remains elevated, up 234%.

BoB’s net profit for the quarter was down 60% at Rs.424 crore and this was once again on account of the provisioning, a tax expense of 242 crore v/s tax credit of Rs.1055 crore in previous Q1 and a 3% drop in net interest income (NII) at Rs.3371 crore. What did come to the rescue was a a 49% jump up in other income at Rs.1444 crore. Net interest margin was up QoQ marginally at 2.8% v/s 2.7%.

In terms of asset quality, Gross NPA rose sharply to 11.15% v/s 9.9% (QoQ) and Net NPA too increased from 5.06% to 5.73%. Clearly, the cleaning up continues at BoB.