The lender has missed profit estimates as bad loan provisions and income from businesses other than lending dropped.
Net income rose 41% to ₹9,113 crore in the three months to March, the highest ever quarterly profit, compared with ₹6,450 crore a year earlier. That lagged the average estimate of ₹10,180 crore from 14 analysts in a Bloomberg survey.
The Mumbai-based lender, which controls a fifth of India’s loan market, is a key gauge for the health of the nation’s financial sector. SBI has been focusing on building a relatively-safer retail loan book in recent years to protect the quality of its assets during the pandemic.
SBI’s gross bad-loan ratio narrowed to 3.97% at the end of March from 4.5% three months earlier. However, it set aside ₹3,260 crore in bad loan provisions, around 5% higher than the previous quarter.
Shares of the bank were marginally higher at ₹462.8 at Mumbai trading, compared to a flattish Bank Nifty.
