IDFC FIRST Bank Q2 FY24 Profit After Tax up 35% YoY at Rs. 751 crore

Financial results at a glance

The Board of Directors of IDFC FIRST Bank, in its meeting held today, approved the unaudited financial results for the quarter and half year ended September 30, 2023.

Profitability

·       Net Profit for Q2-FY24 grew 35% YOY from Rs. 556 crore in Q2-FY23 to Rs. 751 crore in Q2-FY24 driven by strong growth in core operating income.

·       Core Operating Profit (pre provision operating profit excluding trading gains) grew strongly by 38% YOY from Rs. 1,052 crore in Q2-FY23 to Rs. 1,456 crore for Q2-FY24.

·       Net Interest Income (NII) grew 32%­ YOY from Rs. 3,002 crore in Q2-FY23 to Rs. 3,950 crore in Q2-FY24.

·       Net interest Margin (gross of IBPC and sell-down) was 6.32% in Q2-FY24 as compared to 5.83% in Q2-FY23 and 6.33% in Q1-FY24.

·       Fee and Other Income grew by 46% YoY from Rs. 945 crore in Q2-FY23 to Rs. 1,376 crore in Q2-FY24. Retail fees constitute 93% of the overall fees for the quarter Q2-FY24.

·       Core Operating income (NII plus Fees, excluding trading gains) grew 35% from Rs. 3,947 crore in Q2-FY23 to Rs. 5,326 crore in Q2-FY24.

·       Operating Expense grew by 34% YoY from Rs. 2,895 crore in Q2-FY23 to Rs. 3,870 crore in Q2-FY24.

·       Provisions increased 25% YOY from Rs. 424 crore in Q2-FY23 to Rs. 528 crore in Q2-FY24. The credit cost (quarterly annualized) as % of average funded assets for Q2-FY24 was 1.19%.

·       RoA (annualized) improved from 1.07% in Q2-FY23 to 1.16% in Q2-FY24.

·       RoE (annualized) improved from 10.13% in Q2-FY23 to 11.03% in Q2-FY24.

Deposits & Borrowings

·       Customer Deposits increased by 44% YoY from Rs. 1,14,004 crore as of September 30, 2022 to Rs. 1,64,726 crore as of September 30, 2023.

·       CASA Deposits grew by 26% YoY from Rs. 63,305 crore as of September 30, 2022 to Rs. 79,468 crore as of September 30, 2023. CASA Ratio stood at 46.4% as of September 30, 2023.

·       Retail deposits grew by 50% YoY from Rs. 84,859 crore as of September 30, 2022 to Rs. 1,27,595 crore as of September 30, 2023.

·       Retail deposits constitutes 77% of total customer deposits as of September 30, 2023.

·       Legacy High Cost Borrowings reduced from Rs. 20,449 crore as of September 30, 2022 to Rs. 15,002 crore as of September 30, 2023.

Funded Assets

·       Funded assets (including advances & credit substitutes) increased by 26% YoY from Rs. 1,45,362 crore as of 30 September 2022 to Rs. 1,83,236 crore as of September 30, 2023.

·       The Bank continues to wind down infrastructure financing as per stated strategy and now constitutes only 1.8% of total funded assets as of September 30, 2023.

·       Exposure to top 20 single borrowers improved from 8% as of September 30, 2022 to 6% as of September 30, 2023.

Assets Quality

·       Gross NPA (GNPA) of the bank has improved to 2.11% as of 30 September 2023 from 3.18% of 30 September 2022.

·       Net NPA (NNPA) of the bank has improved to 0.68% as of 30 September 2023 from 1.09% of 30 September 2022.

·       GNPA of the Retail, Rural and SME Finance has improved to 1.53% as of 30 September 2023 from 2.03% of 30 September 2022.

·       NNPA of the Retail, Rural and SME Finance has improved to 0.52% as of 30 September 2023 from 0.73% of 30 September 2022.

·       Excluding the infrastructure financing book which the Bank is running down, the GNPA and NNPA of the Bank would have been 1.69% and 0.46% respectively as of September 30, 2023.

·       SMA-1 and SMA-2 (31-90 DPD which is the pre-NPA stage) in Retail, Rural and SME Finance portfolio has reduced from 0.89% as of September 30, 2022 to 0.77% as of September 30, 2023.

·       Collection efficiency for urban retail business (excluding prepayments and EMI arrears) in current bucket continues to remain high at 99.5%.

·       Provision coverage ratio (including technical write-off) of the bank has increased to 84.09% as of September 30, 2023 from 76.49% as of September 30, 2022.

·       Standard restructured book as % of total funded assets improved to 0.38% from 1.03% at September 30, 2022.

Capital Position & Liquidity

·       Capital Adequacy of the Bank was strong at 16.54% with CET-1 Ratio at 13.49% as on September 30, 2023.

·       During the first week of October 2023, the Bank successfully raised Rs. 3,000 crore from set of Marquee investors via qualified institutional placement (QIP) at an issue price of Rs. 90.25 per share.

·       Factoring the above capital raise, the total CRAR as on September 30, 2023 would be 18.06% with CET-1 at 15.01%.

·       Average LCR was strong at 122% for the quarter ending on September 30, 2023.

Comments from Managing Director & CEO

Mr. V Vaidyanathan, Managing Director and CEO, IDFC FIRST Bank, said,

“As mentioned before, we are firmly fixated on building our Bank for the “long-run” and are building our fundamentals, our culture and our products keeping long run thinking in mind.

Diversified customer deposits are the most important foundational capability for a Bank. We are sincerely thankful for such goodwill of our esteemed customers because of which our customer deposits continue to grow well at 44% YOY, and our CASA ratio continues to be strong at 46.4%.

We are happy that our asset quality continued to improve. On the Retail, Rural & SME business, where our Bank particularly specializes in, the Gross NPA and Net NPA have remained very low at 1.53% and 0.52% respectively. We will stay very watchful on this front all the time.

We have registered profit of Rs. 1,516 crore in H1-FY24, representing a growth of 47% over PAT of Rs. 1,030 crore in H1-FY23.”