ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, YES, PNB, RBL Bank: 10 banks to report Q2 results on Saturday, October 18; what to expect

» HDFC Bank

» ICICI Bank

» YES Bank

» Punjab National Bank (PNB)

» IDFC First Bank

» IndusInd Bank

» IDBI Bank

» The Federal Bank

» RBL Bank; and

» J&K Bank.

Other notable names that will announce their Q2 earnings are UltraTech Cement, UTI AMC, SML Isuzu, and Can Fin Homes.

What to expect from the banking names?

Analysts note that Q2 earnings for India Inc. are expected to stage a rebound after a muted Q1, supported by a mix of cyclical and structural factors. The financial sector remains a key support to overall earnings growth.

“Banks and NBFCs are benefiting from steady credit demand across retail, agriculture, and MSME segments, while asset quality has stayed stable. Even with slight pressure on net interest margins, profitability is being supported by healthy loan growth, controlled slippages, and recoveries from past stressed accounts,” said Anil Rego, Founder and Fund Manager at Right Horizons PMS.

Asset quality

Analysts expect a comfortable asset quality outcome for large banks (private as well as state-owned). In unsecured segments (particularly credit card and personal loans), large private banks appear to be more comfortable lending aggressively in these segments.

Within mid-size banks, microfinance (MFI) asset quality will witness improvement, although credit costs will remain elevated. The focus will be on forward flows in early delinquency buckets and X bucket collection efficiency (CE).

"Credit card delinquency (for a few mid-size banks) will continue to stay elevated, with some sequential improvement. Overall, we expect credit costs to remain broadly steady for large banks (private as well as SOE) and stay elevated for mid-size banks (but visibility to improve, particularly for select stressed segments)," said a news report that quoted analysts at an investment firm.

In banking, an "X bucket collection" refers to the process of collecting payments from a specific category or "bucket" of accounts that are not currently overdue (non-overdue or performing buckets). It is a key metric to measure the efficiency of early-stage debt collection, with the goal of recovering payments from these accounts during their designated month to prevent them from becoming delinquent.

Margins

Most analysts believe margins bottomed out in 2QFY26F, but it’s important to know where the margins will trough. They say the margin decline will be limited for mid-size banks, in the range of 5-10 bp (given the higher share of fixed-rate loans funded by wholesale liabilities). Public sector banks should also witness relatively lower QoQ margin decline (~8-10 bp) vs. large private banks (~15 bp).

"Within large private banks, Axis Bank will see the sharpest margin decline (given its lagged repo rate cut pass-through), followed by ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank. Across banks, we expect a QoQ margin dip of 5-15 bps, and NII growth should be broadly flat/negative 1-3% QoQ. On a YoY basis, NII growth should be 3% for large private banks, decline 3% for state-owned banks, and fall 1% for mid-size banks (excluding IndusInd Bank), the investment firm, mentioned above, said, as reported by news channels.

It must be noted that Axis Bank has already announced its Q2 earnings.

Net interest margin (NIM) came in at 3.73% for the quarter under review, as per the company’s earnings release.

The private sector lender this week reported a 26% decline in standalone net profit to ₹5,089.64 crore annually for the quarter ended September 2025. It had posted a profit of ₹6,917.57 crore for the July-September quarter in 2024-25.

However, it was ₹5,806.14 crore in the first quarter of fiscal 2025-26.