Will dilute some of our stake in NSE in its IPO: SBI Chairman

State Bank of India Chairman C S Setty said the PSU bank major will dilute some of its stake in NSE in its IPO.

"We will dilute some of our stake in NSE in its IPO," said Setty in the post-Q4 results press conference, reported Informist.

Setty said the PSU lender has no plan to list SBI General Insurance anytime soon.

Singapore's state-owned investor Temasek and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board are among 20 investors looking to sell down stakes when National Stock Exchange goes public this year, sources familiar with the deal told Reuters last month.

The share sale by India's largest exchange would have a value of $2.75 billion.

State Bank of India missed fourth-quarter profit estimates on Friday as a drop in treasury income outweighed stronger core lending income, sending shares of the country's largest lender to a four-week low.

While credit momentum remained strong during the quarter, the Reserve Bank of India's curbs on forex arbitrage also hit banks' trading income, though some of the restrictions were later eased. Rising bond yields weighed on lenders as higher yields reduce the value of their bond holdings.

SBI's standalone net profit rose to Rs 19,684 crore for the January-March quarter from Rs 18,643 crore a year earlier, but missed analysts' expectations of 203.12 billion rupees, hurt by a near-29% fall in other income.

Income from treasury operations fell to Rs 1,259 crore from Rs 8,991 crore a year earlier.

The bank said it had an arbitrage book of $5 billion, adding that these positions were exited at a loss of Rs 57 crore.

SBI shares fell as much as 7.43% to Rs 1010.90 rupees apiece after the results, their steepest intraday decline since February 1.

Net interest income, or core lending income, was up 4.1% at Rs 44,380 crore.

The lender's net interest margin contracted to 2.8% from 2.98% in the previous quarter and 2.99% a year earlier.

In February, SBI raised its credit growth forecast to 13%-15% for fiscal year 2026 from 12%-14%, citing broad-based growth across segments. For the current financial year, it expects credit growth to remain at 13%-15%.

Growth in SBI's loan book, considered a bellwether for India's banking sector, is closely watched for signals on broader economic trends in Asia's third-largest economy.