Over the course of a year, ICICI Bank, the second-largest private lender in India, outperformed not only the BSE Sensex and Nifty50 but also the banking indices Nifty Bank (18.4%) and BSE Bankex (16.5%). The stock is prepared for the next stage of the climb thanks to strong Q4 earnings and technical triggers.
The stock increased Rs 8.45 or 0.93% from Monday’s closing price to close at Rs 913.20 on the NSE on Tuesday.
Technical Opinion from Axis Securities’ Rajesh Palviya, VP of Technical and Derivatives Research:
“ICICI BANK is creating a string of higher peaks and bottoms across all time frames and is in a strong uptrend overall. The stock has just significantly recovered and reclaimed its 20, 50, 100, and 200-day SMAs, signaling a strong return of the bulls, according to Rajesh Palviya, vice president of technical and derivatives research at Axis Securities.
“On a weekly time scale, the stock is holding above its upwardly sloping channel over the past two years, which reinforces the positive trend. Increased volumes during the past few months indicate a pattern that is strengthening. Rising strength is also shown on short- to medium-term charts since the RSI, a daily, weekly, and monthly strength indicator, is in a bullish state, according to Palviya.
The critical support levels from the current levels are Rs. 860-800, and the stock’s upside is likely to exceed its recent high.
According to Trendlyne, the RSI and MFI momentum indicators are in a medium range at 64.1 and 64.4, respectively. The stock is said to be trading in oversold territory if the figure is below 30, and overbought area if the number is above 70.
ICICI Bank is still rated as a “Buy” by Sharekhan, with an unchanged price objective of Rs 1,120. The price at which the stock is recommended is Rs 884. The stock is now trading at 2.3X/1.9X its estimated core book value for FY2024E/FY2025E. On the basis of sustained performance and high-quality earnings, it was stated that great outperformance and future re-ratings are expected to be quite slow.
PAT for ICICI Bank was Rs 9,121.87 crore, up 30% year over year (YoY) from Rs 7018.71 crore in Q4FY23. PAT increased by 36.7% YoY to Rs 31,896 crore for the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2023. The overall standalone income for the reporting quarter increased by almost 32% YoY to 36,108.88 crore. In Q4FY22, it was Rs 27,412.32 crore.