EconomyFinance
Bajaj Housing Finance's profit rises 18% as home loan book grows 25%
The Bajaj group's mortgage lender earned ₹757 crore in the September quarter. Its assets under management crossed ₹1.58 lakh crore, though bad loans edged up.
Key points
- Net profit rose 17.7% to ₹756.97 crore from ₹642.96 crore a year earlier.
- Assets under management grew 25% to ₹1,58,205 crore.
- Gross bad loans rose slightly to 0.29% from 0.26%.
Bajaj Housing Finance, the home loan arm of the Bajaj group, reported a 17.7% rise in quarterly profit on Friday as its loan book kept growing at about a quarter a year.
Standalone net profit for the three months to September was ₹756.97 crore, up from ₹642.96 crore a year earlier and 5.8% more than the ₹715.28 crore it earned in the June quarter. Revenue from operations rose 18.3% to ₹3,250.57 crore.
Assets under management, the total of the loans it manages, grew 25% to ₹1,58,205 crore at the end of September from ₹1,26,749 crore a year ago.
Asset quality
Bad loans rose slightly from a very low base. Gross non-performing assets were 0.29% of loans, against 0.26% a year earlier, while net NPAs held at 0.12%. The company’s capital adequacy ratio, a measure of how much capital it holds against its loans, was 21.24%.
For the first half of the financial year, net profit was up 20.1% at ₹1,472.25 crore. Earnings per share for the quarter rose to ₹0.91 from ₹0.77.
The company’s joint auditors, Singhi & Co. and Mukund M. Chitale & Co., gave the unaudited results an unmodified review.
The results come nine days after the Reserve Bank raised its repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.5%, its first increase in more than three years, and on the day a tighter daily cash reserve rule for banks took effect. The December quarter will be the first to show how higher rates affect home loan demand.