State Bank of India (SBI) hit the Rs 5 trillion mark in market capitalisation for the first time ever after its shares reached an all-time high of Rs 574.75 on Wednesday. The stock has been gaining for the last 5 days, rising by 7.61% in the period. This rounds off a strong 3 months for the public sector bank which saw its stock surge 26% and outperform the Sensex which gained 13.9% in the same period.

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SBI’s performance today was in stark contrast to the overall pulse of the market which touched an intra-day low of 59,417.12 this morning- a dip of 1.9% from yesterday’s closing. With this, SBI, which is the largest bank in India with a balance sheet size of over around Rs 54 trillion crores, stood at the seventh position in the overall market cap ranking, according to the data from BSE. SBI also became the third lender in the country behind HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank to cross the Rs 5 trillion mark in market capitalisation.

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Analysts at ICICI securities are bullish about the performance of SBI believing that the bank’s asset quality trend shall continue to improve and that incremental stress will be lower.

Analysts at Canara Bank Securities credited the recent surge to SBI’s exceptional operational performance and increased profitability despite provisioning.

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“We are very bullish on the stock in view of attractive valuation, strong distribution network to unleash huge Indian potential, adequate capital, improved asset quality, increased digitalization spends, normalizing macro conditions after easing Lockdown restrictions, and robust performance from subsidiaries,” Canara Bank Securities said in its Q1 result update.