Banks | CHINA 2011 Outlook NOMURA INTERNATIONAL (HK) LIMITED Lucy Feng +852 2252 2165
[email protected] Donger Wang +852 2252 1590
[email protected] BULLISH ANCHOR REPORT A leap of faith Stocks for action We think the Year of the Rabbit will be favourable for early believers in China banks. We remain positive on the sector, with We believe the market is undervaluing the near-term operational outlook, overplaying CMB (SME focus), BOC (RMB regulatory risks and ignoring emerging growth. We look for NIMs to expand in the near deregulation), ABC (rural financing) and to medium term, and see the pace accelerating in 1Q11F and 2Q11F on the back of ICBC (defensive play) our top H-share the two rate hikes in late 2010. The fear factor has changed from LGFV exposure to picks. Industrial Bank (mortgage rate liberalisation, particularly deposit liberalisation, but this is likely to take a long time portfolio) is our A-share pick. in our view, and we do not expect significant margin erosion (50bps decline implied by market valuations) in the next three years as China’s inflation and benchmark rates are Local Price Stock Rating price target on the rise while the PBoC addresses the issues of negative deposit rates and “zero” ABC-H (1288 HK) BUY 3.99 4.80 real lending rates. We do acknowledge that the introduction of different RRRs changes ICBC-H (1398 HK) BUY 5.87 7.60 the playing field and this is an overhang on the stocks, but we believe we are the first CCB-H (939 HK) BUY 7.06 8.60 BOC-H (3988 HK) BUY 4.14 5.20 on the Street to analyse this in detail and conclude that what it really means is that the BOCOM-H (3328 HK) NEUTRAL 8.03 9.00 PBoC wants to align economic growth more closely with resource allocation.