City Union Bank Q4 results, Reports Rs 95.25 crore loss

City Union Bank on Thursday reported a loss of Rs 95.25 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 2020, due to a spike in bad loan provisioning.

The private sector lender had posted a net profit of Rs 175.11 crore during the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year 2018-19. Sequentially, the bank had registered a net profit of Rs 192.43 crore in the December 2019 quarter.

The bank's provisioning for bad loans and contingencies had to be raised multi- fold to Rs 450.38 crore in the March 2020 quarter, against Rs 90.67 crore in the year-ago period, City Union Bank said in a regulatory filing.

Income during the reporting quarter of 2019-20 rose to Rs 1,220.98 crore, from Rs 1,131.44 crore a year ago.

On the asset front, the bank witnessed a spike in bad loans as gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose to 4.09 per cent of the gross advances as on March 31, 2020, as against 2.95 per cent in the year-ago corresponding quarter.

In absolute value, the gross NPAs were of Rs 1,413.40 crore, higher than Rs 977.05 crore in the year-ago period.

Likewise, the net NPAs also increased to 2.29 per cent (Rs 778.49 crore), compared with 1.81 per cent (Rs 591.46 crore).

For the full year 2019-20, the bank posted a net profit of Rs 476.32 crore, down 30.2 per cent from Rs 682.85 crore in 2018-19.

However, income during the year grew to Rs 4,848.54 crore, from Rs 4,281.56 crore in the preceding financial year.

On the coronavirus pandemic, City Union Bank said it has sufficient capital and adequate liquidity to support its business growth and would continue to be the focus area of the bank during this period.

"The bank, based on available information at this point of time and as a prudent measure, has made a provision of Rs 125 crore in the current quarter that includes an adhoc COVID-19 provision of Rs 102 crore, over and above the (Reserve Bank of India) RBI-prescribed norms," it said.