Bank of Maharashtra's Q3 profit jumps 56%; rise in NPAs dampen earnings

State-owned Bank of Maharashtra on Wednesday reported a jump of 55.6% in its net profit at Rs 89.06 crore for the third quarter ended December 2015.

The Pune-headquartered public sector lender had made a profit of Rs 57.24 crore in the October-December quarter of financial year 2014-15.

Total income of the bank increased to Rs 3,475.98 crore during the third quarter of current fiscal, showing a rise of 3.2% from Rs 3,366.85 crore in year-ago period, it said in a BSE filing.

The bank's gross non-performing assets (NPAs) or bad loans soared further to 7.97% of the gross advances as of December 2015, up from 6.65% during the same period of previous fiscal.

Net NPAs too rose to 5.52% of the net advances for the quarter under review, from 4.71% a year ago.

Bank of Maharashtra kept aside for provisioning and contingencies a sum of Rs 345.01 crore during the quarter as against Rs 580.14 crore reserved in the year ago period.

Also, there were write-off to the tune of Rs 225.38 crore during the quarter ended December as the bank re-computed the provision of restructured advances in accordance with the RBI's guidelines on asset quality review in July 2015.

Shares of the bank were trading 8.53% up at Rs 31.80 a piece during pre-close session on BSE.