SBI reports 41% net profit of Rs 9,113.5 crore in Q4

For the quarter ending March 2022 (Q4FY22), State Bank of India has reported a 41 percent year-on-year rise in net profit at Rs 9,113.5 crore, which was below Street's estimate of Rs 9,927.6 crore.

SBI's net profit for Q4FY22 was its highest ever; however the bank's shares slipped a little over 1 percent in response to the quarterly results.

The net profit growth was on the back of a 15.3 percent growth in net interest income which stood at Rs 31,198 crore, which is lower versus analysts' expectations of Rs 31,570 crore.

Non-interest income disappointed, which slipped 27 percent year-on-year. But on a sequential basis, non-interest income jumped 37 percent while NII growth was a mere 1.6 percent.

Notwithstanding the modest operating metrics, the bank's loan book grew at a decent 11 percent. Chairman Dinesh Khara said that the loan book growth is broad based with both retail and corporate showing strong growth.

"We should continue to see the loan growth we have seen in the past both in retail and corporate," he said. SBI's retail loan book growth continued to outpace that of its corporate loan book. Retail loans showed a growth of 15.11 percent, driven by home loans while corporate loans showed a growth of 6.3 percent from the year-ago period.

Credit growth, according to Khara, would continue to improve going forward and that the bank was seeing demand from various sectors. He added that SBI has an unused working capital limit of Rs 2 lakh crore which he expects to be used fully as Indian companies begin to increase their investments and capacity utilisation improves.

Even as the bank reported an improvement in loan growth, SBI's strong point was its asset quality in Q4FY22.

The lender continued to see sequential improvement in asset quality as the gross non-performing assets ratio declined to 3.97 percent from 4.5 percent in the previous quarter. Similarly, the bank's net NPA ratio fell to 1.02 percent in the reported quarter from 1.34 percent in the previous quarter.

SBI's restructured loan accounts were roughly Rs 30,000 crore or 1.1 percent of its total loan book. The book is fully provided for, the bank said.

The lender's board also recommended a dividend of Rs 7.1 per share for the financial year ended March 31, 2022.