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Punjab National Bank (PNB), the country’s second-largest public sector bank, reported on Friday a 477 per cent increase in standalone net profit for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2023, at ₹1,159 crore (₹201 crore). In the December 2022 quarter, PNB recorded a net profit of ₹629 crore.
Encouraged by strong bottomline performance, PNB is now eyeing full-year profits of over ₹4,000 crore this fiscal (2023-24), Atul Kumar Goel, Managing Director and CEO, said here on Friday.
The latest quarterly bottomline performance of the bank was its best in the last twelve quarters, he added.
On a consolidated basis, PNB reported a net profit of ₹1,741.11 crore in the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2023, as against a net profit of ₹660 crore in the December 2022 quarter. This was also much higher than the net profit of ₹245 crore in the March 2022 quarter.
Higher recovery
Goel attributed the strong bottomline performance to better recoveries from non-performing loans. Consistently, quarter-after-quarter last fiscal (2022-23), PNB made a higher recovery while slippages came down in each of these periods.
Goel said that the bank is confident of bringing down its gross NPA level as a percentage of advances to less than 7 per cent this fiscal year and that of net NPA to less than two percentage points.
The Board of Directors has recommended a dividend of ₹0.65 per equity share (32.5%) with a face value of ₹2 each for fiscal 2022–23. For fiscal 2021–22, PNB declared a dividend of ₹0.64 per equity share.
For the entire fiscal 2023–24, PNB has pegged the recovery target at ₹22,000 crore. Last fiscal, the recovery target was ₹32,000 crore, of which the bank achieved about ₹29,000 crore.
Credit growth
Goel said that PNB expects its overall credit growth during the current fiscal year to be 12–13 percent. It was 12.68 per cent in 2022–23. On deposit growth, Goel said that he sees deposit growth of 10–11 percent. “I don’t see deposit rates going up further”, Goel noted.
He also said that interest rates in the system have already peaked and would, after some time, start coming down.
Goal said that PNB will focus this fiscal on ramping up its gold loan portfolio besides enhancing credit to NBFCs.
Asked about the likely impact of expected credit loss (ECL) provisioning, Goel highlighted that this was only at the draft stage and one would have to wait for such a framework to be implemented by the regulator.
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