SBI Cards standalone PAT jumps 75% YoY to ₹778 Cr as credit costs ease, NPM hits 14.7%

SBI Cards' standalone net profit for Q2 FY27 (quarter ended September 30, 2026) came in at ₹777.60 Cr, up 74.8% year-on-year from ₹444.77 Cr and up 17.0% sequentially from ₹664.44 Cr — a clear profitability story built on easing credit costs rather than topline growth. Revenue from operations rose a modest 3.6% YoY to ₹5,140.53 Cr (+2.0% QoQ), so the YoY profit surge came almost entirely from a lighter provisioning charge, not business growth; net profit margin (PAT/total income) expanded to 14.67% from 8.66% a year ago and 12.76% last quarter. Basic and diluted EPS was ₹8.17 against ₹4.67 a year ago and ₹6.98 last quarter. There is no separate consolidated statement — the company has no subsidiaries, associates or joint ventures, so these standalone figures are the complete picture. Impairment on financial instruments — the dominant cost line for a card lender — fell to ₹819.37 Cr from ₹1,292.72 Cr a year ago and ₹947.68 Cr last quarter, continuing the moderation management flagged on the last call ("credit costs expected to moderate further but remain elevated"). Asset quality improved in step: gross Stage-3 (NPA) ratio fell to 1.90% from 2.41% at March-26, net Stage-3 to 0.77%, with provision coverage at 59.76%. The company still layered on caution — an additional ₹30 Cr prudential impairment buffer this quarter, taking the cumulative overlay above the ECL model to ₹100 Cr (versus ₹70 Cr at June-26 and ₹28.05 Cr a year ago) — though that cumulative buffer is down sharply from ₹220 Cr at March-26, implying net releases through H1 even as a modest top-up continues each quarter. Operating expenses (employee costs, depreciation and other opex) totalled ₹2,315 Cr against net total income (after finance costs) of ₹4,514 Cr, a ~51% ratio comfortably inside management's 56-58% FY27 cost-to-income guidance. No consensus estimate specific to this quarter could be confirmed via web search — results were released same-day and no pre-result preview was on file, so vsStreet is marked unknown rather than guessed. Against the company's own guidance from the last concall, the quarter is broadly on track: credit costs continued to moderate as flagged, and an annualised ROA of roughly 4.4% (PAT run-rate on period-end assets) sits near the top of the 4-4.5% medium-term target management cited against a 3.9% base. One guided item remains unmet by design — "asset growth to pick up in H2 FY27" — the loan book stood at ₹56,532 Cr at September-26, still below the ₹57,856 Cr of a year ago, so growth has not yet inflected; that was always flagged as an H2 event. This is also the first quarter reviewed by the company's newly appointed joint statutory auditors, V.K. Dhingra & Co. and S.P. Chopra & Co. (appointed September 22, 2026), who issued an unqualified review with only an emphasis-of-matter note on the additional provisioning. Two new launches during the quarter — the Eternal co-branded card and a YONO fixed-deposit-backed secured card — align with the guided H2 acquisition push but carried no P&L impact this quarter. The quarter sets up a credit-cost-and-growth watch for H2: whether the loan book inflects as guided, whether the impairment buffer continues to be run down, and whether cost-to-income discipline holds as acquisition spend rises behind the new card launches.