

Margin dims Kotak Mahindra Bank's Q3 halo
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. After almost a year of being stuck in a range, the stock of Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd has received two triggers in quick succession. While the 1:5 share subdivision on 14 January was meant to enhance liquidity in the stock, it has failed to lift sentiment.
However, the bank’s December quarter (Q3FY26) earnings raise hopes. Robust growth in deposits and advances, along with improvement in asset quality, has taken some of the pressure off profitability. Kotak has fared better than its fellow large-cap peers in a competitive deposit environment.
Its 15% year-on-year deposit-growth was hot on the heels of its 16% growth in advances. Even as the bank pushed the pedal on consumer lending amid the GST recast-powered festival demand spike, the growth in its savings deposits (including sweep deposits, or ActivMoney) kept up pace. This has allowed Kotak to keep a lid on the credit-deposit ratio, which was maintained at a healthy 88.6%.
It also inspires confidence that, unlike peers, Kotak was not hit by the RBI’s mandated additional provisions towards misclassified priority sector loans. In fact, the bank’s provisions declined to ₹810 crore, from ₹947 crore in the September quarter. Reflecting the industry-wide trend of improving asset quality, Kotak’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) inched 9 basis points (bps) lower quarter-on-quarter to 1.30%, while net NPA slid down by one basis point to 0.31%.
A basis point is one-hundredth of one percentage point. The stressed credit-card and retail microcredit portfolios, which had seen write-offs since FY25, remained stable sequentially. This, along with the 16bps drop in credit costs to 0.63%, points to an apparent bottoming of the stress-cycle.
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