Bank of Maharashtra quarterly profit jumps to Rs 840 crore; lender to raise Rs 1,000 crore in June quarter

State-owned Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) on Monday reported a more than two-fold jump in its net profit to Rs 840 crore for the March quarter, helped by a decline in bad loans and a rise in interest income.
The bank had earned a net profit of Rs 355 crore in the year-ago period.

During the quarter, total income increased to Rs 5,317 crore as against Rs 3,949 crore a year ago, BoM said in a regulatory filing. Interest income grew to Rs 4,495 crore during the period under review, from Rs 3,426 crore in the corresponding quarter a year ago.

The bank's board has recommended a dividend of Rs 1.30 per share or 13 per cent of Rs 10 face value out of the net profits for the year ended March 31, 2023.

Addressing media, BoM managing director A S Rajeev said the bank plans to raise Rs 1,000 crore via share sale during the April-June quarter of the current fiscal to meet Minimum Public Shareholding (MPS) norms of markets regulator Sebi.

Another Rs 1,000 crore would be raised from Follow-on Public Offer (FPO) or Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP) depending on the market situation, he said.

The bank was ready with Rs 1,000 crore share sale plan in the last quarter itself. However, due to uncertainty in the market, it could not happen, he said, adding that equity dilution of up to Rs 2,000 crore would bring down the government's holding in the bank to 83-84 per cent.

Currently, the government of India holds a 90.97 per cent stake in the bank. As per the Sebi norms, listed entities are required to have at least 25 per cent public shareholding.

Talking about growth plans, Rajeev said, the bank expects the credit growth of 20-22 per cent while deposits are likely to see an increase of 14-16 per cent in the current year. He said the bank aims to touch a total business of Rs 5 lakh crore by the end of FY24.

Gross Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) were reduced to 2.47 per cent of gross advances as of March 31, 2023 from 3.94 per cent by the end of March 2022.

Net NPAs also came down to 0.25 per cent of the advances from 0.97 per cent at the end of 2022.

He said net NPA level has hit a plateau and there may be some loans which may go bad so the ratio would remain more or less at the same level during this year as well. The fall in bad loans ratio helped cut the provisions towards NPAs for Q4FY23 to Rs 545 crore as compared with Rs 568 crore a year ago.

The board also approved a proposal for raising capital aggregating up to Rs 7,500 crore through FPO/ Rights issue/ QIP/ Preferential issue or any other mode or combination in 2023-24.

Further, Rajeev said the bank is comfortable as far as capital requirement is concerned. Additional capital raised would be able to take care of over 20 per cent growth rate for the next 2-3 years. The capital adequacy ratio of the bank increased to 18.14 per cent from 16.48 per cent at the end of March 2022.

While total business grew 21.23 per cent to Rs 4,09,202 crore, gross advances grew 29.49 per cent to Rs 1,75,120 crore and total deposits rose 15.71 per cent to Rs 2,34,083 crore at the end of March 2023.

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