(PTI) On the back of record loan sales, Bajaj Finance on Friday booked the highest-ever quarterly consolidated net profit of ₹2,973 crore for the December quarter, logging in an on-year 40 per cent growth.
The Pune-based non-banking lender said its core net interest income rose 28 per cent to ₹7,435 crore on-year during the reporting quarter, aided by a higher 28 per cent jump in the key profitability metric net interest income.
The company said it added 3.14 million new credit customers during the October-December quarter and 7.84 million so far this fiscal, making this the highest-ever for the non-banking lender focused on retail finance, taking its total customer franchise to 66.05 million, up 19 per cent from 55.36 million in December 2021.
This record disbursement had the company's assets under management growing 27 per cent to ₹2,30,842 crore.
Asset quality improved considerably with both gross NPAs as well as net NPAs falling to 1.14 per cent and 0.41 per cent, respectively from 1.73 per cent and 0.78 per cent in December 2021. As a result, its loan losses and provisions declined steeply to ₹841 crore from ₹1,051 crore and it continues to maintain an additional provision of ₹1,000 crore.
This translates into provision coverage ratio of 64 per cent on stage 3 assets and 116 basis points on stage 1 and 2 assets, the company said, adding, the capital adequacy ratio rose to 25.14 per cent from 23.28 per cent.
The consolidated results include the earnings of its wholly-owned subsidiaries -- Bajaj Housing Finance, Bajaj Financial Securities and its associate company Snapwork Technologies.
Its two- and three-wheeler finance book rose 11 per cent to ₹11,786 crore, urban B2B finance rose 12 per cent to ₹16,712 crore and urban B2C finance rose 29 per cent to ₹45,108 crore.
Rural B2B finance grew 17 per cent to ₹4,684 crore while rural B2C finance jumped 29 per cent to ₹18,458 crore. SME book rose 33 per cent to ₹30,739 crore and commercial lending soared 42 per cent to ₹14,848 crore. Loan against securities zoomed 45 per cent to ₹12,177 crore, while mortgage lending rose 26 per cent to ₹13,847 crore, taking the total AUM to ₹1,68,359 crore, a growth of 27 per cent.