New Delhi - Punjab National Bank on Tuesday posted a marginal 2.5 percent increase in net profit to Rs 774.56 crore for its third quarter ended December 31, on account of higher provisioning for bad loans.

The country's second largest public sector bank by assets had reported net profit of Rs 755.41 crore for the October- December quarter of the 2013-14 financial year.

Poor performance of the bank pulled its share price down by nearly 7 percent to Rs 179.20 on the BSE after the numbers were announced.

As far as PNB's asset quality is concerned, gross NPAs as a percentage to total advances rose to 5.97 per cent from 4.96 per cent in the same quarter an year ago.

Its net NPAs went up to 3.82 percent from 2.80 percent at the end of December 2013, PNB said in a statement.

Gross NPA in absolute terms rose to Rs 22,211.43 crore as compared to Rs 16,595.84 crore at the end of December 2013.

However, total provisions, excluding for income tax, made during the third quarter of 2014-15 were Rs 1,467.77 crore as against Rs 1,590.04 crore in the year-ago period.

The total income increased to Rs 12,904.85 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2014 from Rs 11,922.30 crore in the same quarter last fiscal.

Operating profit of PNB remained flat at Rs 2,751 crore as against Rs 2,702 crore in the year-ago period.

During the first three quarters of 2014-15, PNB has registered just 8.6 percent growth in net profit to Rs 2,755 crore, compared to Rs 2,536 crore in the year-ago period.

The bank's total income for the nine month period in the current fiscal is Rs 38,750 crore, compared to Rs 35,302 crore in the same period of the previous financial year. PTI