Muthoot Finance net rises 25% in Q2

Muthoot Finance Ltd’s net profit rose 25 per cent to Rs 268 crore in the second quarter of this fiscal from Rs 215 crore in the corresponding period last year.

The retail loan assets under management increased by Rs 405 crore to Rs 23,743 crore in the quarter.

For the half year ended September 30, the net profit rose 27 per cent to Rs 514 crore from Rs 406 crore in the year-ago period.

The total income in H1 FY13 stood at Rs 2,610 crore (Rs 2,024 crore in H1 FY12), a growth of 29 per cent.

Public shareholding

The board at a meeting on Monday decided to raise the public holding of its shares to 25 per cent from the current 19.88 per cent by May 2014 to comply with the SEBI stipulation on minimum public holding.

This dilution may be through any of the modes approved by SEBI from time to time in one or more tranches.

M. G. George Muthoot, Chairman, said that the half year gone by has been extremely challenging for gold loan NBFCs, owing to the unequal playing field created by 60 per cent loan-to-value cap made applicable only to NBFCs.

Also, because of the negative perception about the sector, asset growth has decelerated and borrowing costs have gone up considerably.

Despite these adverse developments, the company, he said, has been able to improve its profitability through ingenious funds management and cost control.

The capital adequacy ratio has risen to 19.95 per cent and loan losses for the six-month period were a negligible of 0.014 per cent (Rs 3.25 crore) of the retail loan portfolio, he said.

sajeevkumar.v@thehindu.co.in