Regional bank stock performance - Technical relief?
The Asian bank sector strongly outperformed the broader market rally last week as
worries over economic health temporarily subsided. Chinese banks were the
biggest gainers, with most of the sector reporting robust FY07 results and guiding
for still positive earnings growth outlook in FY08. On the contrary, Taiwan banks
were the main laggards and delivered a disappointing performance in the week
following the KMT victory in the Presidential elections (viewed as the most
market-friendly outcome).

Weekly commentary – Consolidation in Phil banks
DB’s Phil banks analyst, Rafael Garchitorena, believes the return to more
normalized business conditions and an end to easy capital will likely revive the
consolidation theme among Phil banks this year. In particular, we see a significant
reduction in bond trading gains to reveal weaker banks’ vulnerability amid
continued margin contraction in the low-interest rate environment. The more
‘normalized’ period of business conditions ahead, with slowing GDP growth, will
allow only those banks with either strong business models or franchises, and
execution capability to deliver positive shareholder returns.
Amongst banks under coverage, BPI (Buy), BDO (Buy) and Security Bank (Buy)
have taken the early lead in consolidation and loan growth, and accounted for an
estimated 70% of last year’s total new loans in the system. We believe they will
continue to be consolidators in the market and benefit from higher marginal
profitability as they continue to shift and garner a larger share of higher-yielding
loan assets. Momentum should see them through more challenging times ahead.
The Phil banks sector currently trades on 11.5x 08F PER and 1.6x 08F PBR which
is at a 16%-30% discount to the Asian bank universe. However, we believe this
fairly reflects Phil banks’ lower forecast EPS growth (14%) and ROE (14.0%)
compared to the regional average, and hence recommend a Neutral position.