ICICI Bank misses expectations, Q3 profit down 32%

Asset quality remains stable, gross bad loans down by 0.05%.

India’s biggest private sector bank, ICICI Bank’s third-quarter profit plunged 32 %, it said on Wednesday, lagging market expectations.

A signboard of the ICICI bank is pictured outside a bank in New Delhi, India. (Reuters)

The bank, India’s third-largest by assets, reported net profit of 16.5 billion rupees ($259.4 million) for the three months to Dec. 31, against 24.42 billion rupees in the same period a year earlier.

That compared with the 19.54 billion rupees average profit estimate of 24 analysts, Thomson Reuters data shows.

Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans stood at 7.82 % at the end of December, compared with 7.87 % at Sept. 30 and 7.2 % a year earlier.