Axis Bank
Axis Bank is India's third-largest private sector bank, lending to retail, SME and corporate customers and running credit card, wealth and payments businesses alongside deposit-taking.
- P/E ~13-14x
- ROE ~13%
- GNPA 1.28%
- Zero promoter pledge
- Results due 17 Oct
Updated on 13 Oct 2026 · Data as of 13 Oct 2026
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Snapshot
- Share price
- ₹1,268.40
- 13 Oct 2026
- 52-week range
- ₹1,160.41 – ₹1,401.92
- All-time peak
- ₹1,401.92
- 25 Feb 2026 · −9.5% from peak
- Dividend yield
- 0.08%
- Price history since
- 1998
- About 27 years of prices
What's happening
Axis Bank's board meets on Saturday, 17 October 2026 to approve Q2 FY27 (July-September 2026) results - just days away. A pre-results business update already showed advances up 22.7% YoY to ₹13.85 lakh crore and deposits up 20.7% YoY to ₹14.52 lakh crore as of 30 September 2026. Separately, Bloomberg reported on 1 October 2026 that the bank plans to double its data-centre lending book over three years to ride India's AI infrastructure build-out.
In plain terms
Axis is one of India's big three private banks (alongside HDFC and ICICI), taking deposits and lending them out at a margin. The tension to watch: its most recent reported profit jump (Q1 FY27, up 23%) was driven mainly by provisions falling sharply, not by core lending income growing much - and the quarter before that had profit fall 25% because of a one-off regulatory provision. So recent profit swings have had more to do with provisioning decisions than with the underlying business getting better or worse, and the 17 October print will be the next test of that.
Quarters
Q2 FY26 (Jul-Sep 2025): net profit fell 25% YoY to ₹5,557 crore even as total income rose a modest 1.4%, because the bank took a one-time ₹1,231 crore standard-asset provision for two discontinued crop-loan products on RBI's direction - management said this will reverse through the P&L as those loans are repaid or close by March 2028, so it is not a core-business decline. Q1 FY27 (Apr-Jun 2026): net profit rose ~23% YoY to ₹7,114 crore, but this was driven primarily by a 43.7% YoY fall in provisions rather than a comparable jump in income - treat the growth rate with caution. Asset quality improved over this period: gross NPA fell to 1.28% (from 1.57% a year earlier) and net NPA to 0.39% (from 0.45%). Q2 FY27 results (quarter ended 30 Sep 2026) are due 17 October 2026 and not yet out.
Performance
Heads-up on splits: Axis Bank has split its shares or issued bonus shares before (most recently 5-for-1 on 28 Jul 2014). A sudden price drop around a split date is usually just the price adjusting for the extra shares, not a crash.
Share price
+6.7% over 1 year
Returns by period
| Period | Axis Bank | Nifty 50 | Kotak Mahindra Bank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 months | −3.7% | −5.5% | +16.1% |
| 1 year | +6.7% | −9.9% | +2.2% |
| 3 years | +26.5% | +15.2% | +25.9% |
| 5 years | +60.4% | +25.1% | +9.8% |
₹100 invested on 13 Oct 2021 became…
- Axis Bank₹160
- Nifty 50₹125
- Kotak Mahindra Bank₹110
Over 5 years the stock has returned 60.4% versus the Nifty's 25.1% and peer Kotak Mahindra Bank's 9.8% - a clear, sustained outperformance. Over 3 years it is up 26.5%, ahead of the Nifty (15.2%) and roughly level with Kotak (26.0%). Over the last year, while the Nifty fell 9.9%, Axis still gained 6.7%, beating both the index and Kotak (2.2%). Over the last 3 months it is down 3.7%, better than the Nifty's -5.5% but far behind Kotak's +16.1% rally, which is a peer-specific move this report can't explain from the data given. The stock sits 9.5% below its 25 Feb 2026 peak of ₹1,401.92, which is a mild pullback, not a crash - it remains well above its 52-week low of ₹1,160.41. The only corporate action on record, a 5:1 split in 2014, is ancient and already built into these price series, so none of this needs a distortion adjustment.
Dividend
Paid in the last 12 months
₹1.00 per share
Dividend yield
0.08%
Dividend yield is the last 12 months of dividends divided by today's share price. A 0.1% yield means every ₹100 of Axis Bank shares paid about ₹0.1 in dividends over the past year. Past payouts can change.
Recent dividends
| Date | Per share |
|---|---|
| 10 Jul 2026 | ₹1.00 |
| 4 Jul 2025 | ₹1.00 |
| 12 Jul 2024 | ₹1.00 |
| 7 Jul 2023 | ₹1.00 |
| 7 Jul 2022 | ₹1.00 |
| 4 Jul 2019 | ₹1.00 |
| 6 Jul 2017 | ₹5.00 |
| 7 Jul 2016 | ₹5.00 |
Valuation
Axis trades around 13-14x trailing earnings and roughly 1.7x book value, with return on equity near 13%. Separating why from whether: a bank earning ~13% ROE priced near 1.7x book is being valued for that return to continue - it looks reasonable rather than cheap or expensive outright, and the real question is whether provisioning stays as benign as it has been (GNPA 1.28%) or normalizes upward. Note: sources quoted conflicting ROCE figures (6.24% vs 11.04%) for the bank; ROCE isn't a standard metric for a leveraged lending business in any case, so it's set aside rather than used here. The dividend yield is negligible at 0.08%, typical of a growth-focused bank, not an income play.
Growth
Top-line growth is clearly volume-led: advances up 22.7% YoY and deposits up 20.7% YoY as of September 2026 is a healthy pace for a bank this size. But recent reported profit growth has leaned heavily on provisions falling rather than on margin or fee income expansion, so the quality of bottom-line growth is less clean than the loan-book growth suggests - the 17 October results, especially the net interest margin trend, will help separate genuine earnings strength from a favourable provisioning swing.
Health
Asset quality is improving, not deteriorating - gross NPA at 1.28% and net NPA at 0.39% (Q1 FY27), both down from a year earlier - so business risk (loan losses) looks contained. The bigger thing to watch is earnings-line volatility from regulatory provisioning decisions, as seen in the ₹1,231 crore one-off crop-loan provision that hit Q2 FY26 profit; this is a financial-reporting/provisioning risk rather than a sign of a weakening loan book. Whether profits are converting cleanly into cash was not verified in this review - check the standalone cash flow statement on Screener.
Ownership
Axis Bank has no founder-promoter in the usual sense - its largest 'promoter' category holder is Life Insurance Corporation of India at about 7.87%, with zero shares pledged, so promoter-pledge risk, a common red flag at founder-run companies, doesn't really apply here. The rest of the register is institutionally held: FIIs around 43%, mutual funds around 33%, other domestic institutions about 9.7%, and retail/others making up the remainder. No other marquee individual investor showed up in the shareholding data searched - none to report.
The View
The one thing to watch
The Q2 FY27 results due 17 October 2026 - specifically the net interest margin and the provisions line - will show whether Axis Bank's recent profit growth reflects a genuinely stronger lending business or mainly favourable provisioning swings.
Strengths
- +Advances up 22.7% YoY to ₹13.85 lakh crore and deposits up 20.7% YoY to ₹14.52 lakh crore as of 30 Sep 2026
- +Gross NPA improved to 1.28% and net NPA to 0.39% in Q1 FY27, down from 1.57%/0.45% a year earlier
- +Zero promoter pledge - LIC, the largest 'promoter' holder at 7.87%, has pledged none of its stake
- +5-year shareholder return of 60.4%, well ahead of the Nifty (25.1%) and peer Kotak Mahindra Bank (9.8%)
Watchpoints
- !Q1 FY27's 23% profit growth was driven mainly by a 43.7% YoY drop in provisions, not core income - watch if this reverses
- !Q2 FY26 profit fell 25% on a one-off ₹1,231 crore RBI-directed provision, showing reported profit can swing on regulatory items unrelated to the loan book itself
- !Dividend yield is just 0.08%, so there's negligible income cushion if the share price stalls
- !Stock is down 3.7% over 3 months and badly lagging peer Kotak's +16.1% over the same period, for reasons not covered in the data reviewed
How sure are we about the data? · Moderate
Profit, NPA and advances/deposits figures for Q1 FY27 and Q2 FY26 were cross-checked across Business Standard, Republic World, Zee Business and the bank's own exchange filing, and were consistent. Promoter shareholding (LIC 7.87%, zero pledge) was cross-checked across Trendlyne, Choice India and MarketsMojo. Valuation multiples (P/E 13.3x-14.0x, P/B 1.67x-1.8x) were reasonably consistent across sources and used; ROCE figures (6.24% vs 11.04%) contradicted each other and are not a standard bank metric, so were set aside rather than averaged. Could not verify standalone cash-flow-to-profit conversion - marked not verified. Analyst price targets seen in the news (e.g., a brokerage's ₹1,700 target) were noted but deliberately excluded as valuation input, per house policy against citing price targets.
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Ticker Tales is not a SEBI-registered investment adviser or research analyst. This report is for learning only and is not investment advice. Data as of 13 Oct 2026.