SBI Q4 result: Bank reports Rs 7,718 crore loss due to rise in bad loans

The State Bank of India on Tuesday reported huge loss in Q4. The country's largest state-run lender reported a mammoth loss of Rs 7,718 crore due to the constant rise in NPAs. However,  last year for the same period the bank had reported a net profit of Rs 2,815 crore. The SBI result is deepest-ever quarterly loss by the bank. 

Banks saw soured loans and provisions surge in the quarter after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in February eliminated half a dozen loan restructuring schemes to hasten the clean-up of near-record levels of bad debt. Most state-run banks that have reported quarterly earnings so far have posted losses.

SBI’s bad-loan provisions for the quarter more than doubled from a year earlier to Rs 280.96 billion. Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans rose to 10.91 per cent from 10.35 per cent three months earlier and 6.90 per cent a year prior, the lender said in a statement.

Meanwhile, despite the biggest quarterly loss, shares of SBI surged as much as 6.2 per cent to Rs 259.70 rupees, its highest in over a month. SBI posted fresh slippages of Rs 336.70 billion in Q4. 

The SBI management had already indicated that quarterly results will be “very bad”, so this was anticipated, said A K Prabhakar, Head of research at IDBI Capital. 

In a financial statement to the stock exchange, the bank has said that it expects bulk of the 12 companies in the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) first list of firms facing bankruptcy proceedings in National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to undergo resolution by the first half of this fiscal year.