Jammu & Kashmir(J&K) Bank half-yearly net profit grows 44%

J&K Bank, the state-owned premier financial institution and a listed entity, today reported a 44% increase in its net profit to Rs 146.34 Cr for the half year ended 30th September 2018 after the reviewed results of the Bank were adopted by the Board of Directors in the meeting held at the Bank’s Corporate Headquarters. The Bank had posted a net profit of Rs 101 Cr during the first half of previous fiscal.

Notably, the Bank has now reported six consecutive quarters of profitability after recovery from a loss of Rs 1632 Cr in the financial year ended March 2017. The gross business turnover of the bank has also seen a record increase surpassing the 1, 50,000 Cr mark with J&K state business contributing more than 1, 05,000 Cr on the back of robust credit growth of 23% year on year.

Discussing the problem of NPAs Parvez Ahmed said, “Overall NPAs are under control though provisioning pressure still remains due to the aging of NPAs that is going to taper in next 2 to 3 quarters. We are maintaining our Provision Coverage Ratio of around 70%. The net NPA is down to 3.91% as compared to 4.76% a year ago. The silver lining is that our J&K state rehabilitated portfolio has been behaving very well with only 0.8% slippages in the 09 months period post cessation of the moratorium period. This has allayed market apprehensions on the J&K state restructured portfolio of Rs 4300 Cr.”

The bank’s total income for the half year period increased to Rs 3603 Cr from Rs 3346 Cr recorded during the corresponding period of the FY 2017-18.

Net Interest Margin (NIM), a benchmark for the profitability of the bank remained healthy and stable at 3.72%. The cost of deposits has reduced to 4.87% as against 5.24% recorded for the corresponding half year of previous fiscal. The net advances of the bank grew to Rs 63691 Cr as against a figure of Rs 51341 Cr a year ago and Rs 56912 Cr in March 2018. On the deposit front, the bank recorded a growth of 15.7% over the last year with low-cost CASA deposits contributing around 50% of the total deposits