Indiabulls Housing net falls 40%

NEW DELHI: Mortgage lender Indiabulls Housing Finance on Friday reported a 40.4% dip in its consolidated profit after tax to Rs 329 crore in the December 2020 quarter, due to higher provisioning.

The lender had registered a profit after tax of Rs 552 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal.

Its Deputy Managing Director Ashwini Kumar Hooda said, "We have been making substantial provisioning and have also done accelerated write-offs. These two factors are responsible for much lower profit (in the third quarter)." The lender made a net provisioning of Rs 140 crore and did accelerated write-offs worth Rs 250 crore during the third quarter of this fiscal.

"Today, we still believe that we would want to be conservative and not show a profit of Rs 500 crore, but would rather like to utilise more income towards the provisioning," Hooda added.

Net interest income (NII) grew to Rs 809 crore from Rs 750 crore in the second quarter of the current financial year, helped by lower cost of funds.

The incremental cost of funds stood at 8.35%, and the overall cost of fund reduced to 8.5%, he said.

Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) stood at 1.75% and net NPAs at 0.77%.

Without the Supreme Court's direction for standstill on asset classification, the proforma GNPAs would be 2.44% as at December 31, 2020, compared with 2.21% as at September 30, 2020.