PNB Housing Finance reported Tuesday a 43% jump in net profit to Rs 269 crore, driven by a huge growth in core net interest income during December quarter, despite a slowdown in loan growth.

Net interest income rose 67% to Rs 734 Crore during the quarter. This was despite the fact that the company’s mainstay retail loan book grew only 6.6% to Rs 53,123crore.

The company stated in a statement that retail book accounts for as high as 92% of this asset.

The total loan book increased by Rs 58.034 crore, from Rs 57.845 crore in Dec 2021. Spread on loans was 3.83 percent, an increase from 3.38%. This helped it improve its net interest margin from 4.14 to 4.68 percent.

The quarter’s total income grew to Rs 1,713.64 Crore, an increase of Rs 1,411.24 Crore in the previous year.

From Rs 129.48 lakh, impairments in financial instruments and writeoffs rose to Rs 254.84 Crore.

Asset quality improved, with the gross bad loan ratio falling to 4.87 percent from 6.06% and the net NPA ratio staying flat at 3.22 percent.

2.86 percent of total dud loans are in the retail sector, which improved from 3.39 %. Corporate NPAs were at 26.61%, down from 30.37 %.