Bajaj Finance Ltd (BAF) has released its mid-quarter update highlighting the impact of the second COVID wave on AUM (INR40-50b, 3% of outstanding AUM) and provisioning (INR11-13b, 0.8% additional credit cost). A large portion of the provisioning is likely to be up-fronted in 1Q. New origination in B2B/other businesses are down to 40/60% vs planned level in May. We have tweaked our estimate based on the revised guidance. Despite an earnings cut of ~11% for FY22, ROEs are likely to be strong at 20%, and we believe the impact is likely to be transient. With the process of unlocking having...