ICICI Bank Q3 net profit meets estimates, bad loans up

ICICI Bank, country's biggest private sector lender by assets, reported a surge in bad loans for the December quarter partly due to a central bank direction to reclassify some troubled loan accounts as bad loans.

Net profit rose 4.5 per cent to Rs 3018 crore ($443 million) for its fiscal third quarter to December 31, from Rs 2,889 crore reported a year earlier, the bank said in a statement on Thursday.

Analysts on average had expected a net profit of Rs 30.17 crore for the bank, which is also listed in New York.

Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans widened to 4.72 per cent in the December quarter from 3.77 per cent in the previous three months.

($1 = Rs 68.1100)

(Reuters)