Kotak’s moratorium numbers better than peers: Sharekhan

Some of the other peer banks have reported one-third of their loan book going under moratorium, says Lalitabh Shrivastava, AVP research.

How are you reading into the Kotak numbers? They have a Rs 650 crore provision figure which obviously is a bit higher perhaps due to the moratorium but the net NPA has come down a tad bit from the sequential quarter.
Sequentially, if you talk about the NPA numbers coming down, one would expect some portion benefit of moratorium to be there. Secondly, what I would be looking at in these numbers and the results would be what portion of the bank’s loan has actually gone in for moratorium by value and how much the bank is providing for that. If I just compare the provision numbers, they have really jumped around Rs 600 crore higher than December quarter; so some portion of that would be additional Covid-related provisions that can be expected, which would be there.

Covid provisioning is at 10% at an account level and 26% of the borrowers by value at account level have availed the moratorium up to 30 April 2020. Could you give your view on this?

Yes, I think these are better numbers because some of the other peer banks have reported somewhere around one-third of their loan book has gone for moratorium. So Kotak’s is coming out to be a lesser amount. I think that is a better performance.

Total provisioning towards advances is higher than NPA at the bank. This includes specific standard and Covid provisioning. What does this essentially mean?
Yes, there would be some standard asset and loan loss provisioning but there would be some provisions that they would have created related to Covid. If you just go for provisions for standard assets and advances, it is around Rs 439 crore and there is a Rs 713 crore general provision for Covid-19. So they are seeing a rise in the overall provisions that we had seen in this quarter.