Yes Bank Q4 results: posts Rs 2,629 cr net profit on gains from AT-1 bond write-off

Yes Bank on Wednesday reported a net profit of Rs 2,629 crore for the March quarter, helped by a massive gain of over Rs 6,200-crore arising out of a controversial write-off of bond investors' investment.

If the one-off gain is excluded, then the bank, which was bailed out by a consortium-led by SBI in March, has a loss of Rs 3,668 crore in the latest quarter under review.

The private sector lender had a loss of Rs 18,560 crore loss in the December quarter while the loss was at Rs 1,506 crore in the March 2019 quarter.

The one-time gain is from the write-off of Additional Tier-I bondholders' Rs 8,419 crore investment, according to a release.

For the fiscal year 2019-20, Yes Bank reported a loss of Rs 16,481 crore, It had a profit of Rs 1,720 crore in the year-ago period.

As part of the the bailout process, the AT-1 bond holders' investment was written-off citing existing rules which gave the new management of the bank a huge breather to get the operations out of the restrictions imposed by RBI and the government on March 5, and start functioning normally.

The bank, which is now headed by SBI's former CFO Prashant Kumar, showed a marginal improvement in the gross non-performing assets ratio at 16.80 per cent in the March quarter as against 18.87 per cent in the three months ended December 2019.

Its overall provisions came at Rs 4,832 crore and the money set aside for NPAs came down to Rs 1,100 crore in the latest March quarter. In the three months ended December 2019, the lender had NPA provisioning of Rs 22,328 crore.

Net advances declined 29 percent to Rs 1.71 lakh crore in the latest quarter under review compared to March 2019 quarter and nearly 8 per cent as against December 2019 quarter.

Deposits at Yes Bank more than halved in the three months ended March compared to the year-ago period.

The core net interest income rose 19.6 per cent sequentially to Rs 1,274 crore in the March quarter. Non-interest income grew 12.3 per cent to Rs 597 crore in the three months ended March compared to the same period a year ago, the release said.

The bank said its strategic focus area of retail has shown resilience despite the lockdown and was one of the key contributors to the business performance during the March quarter.

The overall capital adequacy of the bank stood at 8.5 per cent as of March 31 with the core Tier-I at 6.3 per cent.

To avoid a possible collapse of Yes Bank, RBI had sacked its management and placed the lender under an administrator on 5 March with a 30-day moratorium, which was later on curtailed to nearly two weeks.

The moratorium on the bank which restricted cash withdrawals limits to only Rs 50,000 was lifted after banking hours on March 18.

On 13 March, the government notified the rescue plan drafted by the RBI.

As part of the ‘Yes Bank Limited Reconstruction Scheme 2020', SBI and other investors made equity capital infusion to the tune of Rs 10,000 crore. Private lenders ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IDFC First Bank, Bandhan Bank, Federal Bank and mortgage lender HDFC Ltd have also infused capital of over Rs 3,000 crore in cash-starved Yes Bank to keep it afloat.