Meanwhile, in Friday’s trade, the stock rose over 2% to hit a 52-week high of Rs 92, backed by heavy volumes on the NSE. A total of 2,41,63,216 equity shares worth Rs 218.6 crore changed hands so far.
PNB is the third public lender after State Bank of India (SBI) and Bank of Baroda to cross the market capitalization of Rs 1 lakh crore.
At 11.38 am, the scrip was trading 0.2% higher at Rs 90.1 on NSE. On a year-to-date basis, the stock has rallied nearly 60%, while it has gained nearly 80% in the past six months. Meanwhile, the public sector lender surged 125% in the last two years.
In Q2 FY23, PNB’s standalone net profit jumped multi-fold to Rs 1,756 crore. The profit growth was 327% from Rs 411 crore reported in the same quarter of last year. Meanwhile, net interest income (NII) during the second quarter rose 20% year-on-year to Rs 9,923 crore. It was Rs 8,271 crore in the year-ago period.
Meanwhile, its operating profit (before provisions and contingencies) jumped 12% to Rs 6,216 crore in the reporting period as against Rs 5,567 crore in the last year period.
The lender’s asset quality improved in the July-September period with gross non-performing assets (NPAs) reducing to 6.96% and net NPAs declining to 1.47%.Technically, the stock’s day RSI (14) is at 77.5. The RSI below 30 is considered oversold and above 70 is overbought, Trendlyne data showed. MACD is at 2.7, which is above its center and signal Line, this is a bullish indicator.
Stating the return ratio on the comeback path, domestic brokerage firm Sharekhan maintained its Buy rating on the stock with a target price of Rs 105, which indicates an upside potential of 17% from the current market prices.
“We believe the bank is likely to deliver higher growth as balance sheet strength improves further going ahead. Healthy loan growth, stable margins, and lower opex growth is expected to lead strong PPoP growth. Overall, the asset quality outlook remains stable to positive. Lower slippages formation and healthy recoveries are likely to boost asset quality further and will help in faster normalisation of credit costs,” the brokerage firm said.
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