IDFC First Bank on Saturday reported its highest ever net profit of Rs 474 crore for the quarter ended June 2022, mainly driven by lower provisioning and higher income.

The private sector lender had posted a net loss of Rs 630 crore in the year-ago quarter.

Sequentially, the net profit rose by 38.2 per cent from Rs 343 crore in the March 2022 quarter.

"We have posted the highest ever profit after tax of Rs 474 crore in Q1FY23. Our return on assets has nearly touched 1 per cent and we expect it to rise from here," V Vaidyanathan, Managing Director and CEO, IDFC FIRST Bank said.

The bank's total income during the April-June period of 2022-23 also rose to Rs  5,777.35 crore against Rs 4,931.76 crore in the same period of 2021-22, IDFC First Bank said in a regulatory filing.

The core interest income grew by 20.4 per cent to Rs 4,921.68 crore compared to Rs 4,089.29 crore. Income from other sources was marginally up 1.6 per cent at Rs 855.67 crore from Rs 842.47 crore.

The asset quality of the bank showed improvement as the gross non-performing assets (NPAs) fell to 3.36 per cent of the gross advances in the June 2022 quarter against 4.61 per cent a year ago.

In absolute value, the gross NPAs (or bad loans) declined to Rs 4,354.75 crore from Rs 4,669.13 crore.

The net NPAs too came down to Rs 1,653.82 crore (1.30 per cent) from Rs 2,293.18 crore (2.32 per cent).

This helped the lender narrow down the requirement to be parked aside towards provisions and contingencies to Rs 307.99 crore for the quarter compared to Rs 1,872.31 crore in the year-ago period.

Core operating profit (excluding trading gains) rose 64 per cent to Rs 987 crore in the June 2022 quarter, the bank said.

Among others, the bank's net interest income (interest earned minus interest expended) grew by 26 per cent to Rs 2,751 crore in Q1FY23. Also, the net interest margin improved to 5.89 per cent from 5.50 per cent.

The lender said its corporate book (non-infrastructure) grew by 12 per cent to Rs 23,970 crore, while infrastructure financing reduced by 35 per cent to Rs 6,739 crore.