Investment thesis
We hosted a luncheon last Wednesday with BBL president Chartsiri Sophonpanich at which he outlined the bank's key areas of focus: 1) leveraging customer relationships to create loan expansion, 2) raising more concern about risk management and 3) maintaining core capability to support long-term growth. BBL will utilize its extensive foreign branch network and corporate lending expertise to support the expansion plans of its corporate and SME clients. BBL has the highest CAR (18.7%), the lowest loan/deposit ratio (89%) and the highest loan-loss-coverage ratio (173%) in the sector. As such, it has the greatest scope for loan growth upside once the economy picks up. Our BUY rating stands.
Loan growth guidance at 3-5percent for FY16, led by SME and retail
BBL has a modest FY16 loan growth target range of 3-5% (we expect 4%), following 4.9% in FY15. Management expects its lending growth focus to be on medium and big SMEs, and retail and offshore loans for CLMV markets (via utilizing offshore branches and leveraging client relationships). The bank sets its fee income growth of 8-10%, NIM target of 2.1% (both of which are close to last year's). We view that most of its financial guidance remains on par with our model. Besides that, its low LDR of 89% could allow the bank to boost loan growth over our target if the country's economic status picks up fast, we believe.
Loan for JAS is under consideration …
Management said that BBL had yet to approve a loan for Jasmin International (JAS) to pay for its telecom licenses, and that the case was undergoing the bank's consideration. However, BBL normally supports clients if their projects look feasible and exemplify low concentration risk, it said. Presently, BBL has lending exposure for the telecoms sector amounting to only 5% of total loans. We anticipate that the bank could come up with good risk management to protect against any downside if BBL took the decision to lend JAS funds in this case.
Besides that, loans for digital TV are monitored and BBL expects that such clients so far have good operations with adequate cash flow. Only Bt2bn in loans to the TV pool were NPL. The bank set provision for the case last year and will follow with debt-collection legal processes.
… while NPL may not be peaking but are controllable
NPL might not reach their peak, the bank told those gathered, but added that new NPL formation was raising no alarms due to the bank's greater attention paid to risk management. Its YE16 NPL ratio would be up slightly from 2.8% last year, BBL said. We view that its highest loan-loss-coverage ratio of 173% in the sector and highest CAR of 18.7% will allow it to mitigate lending risk better than other institutions. We expect BBL to cut its FY16 loan-loss provisioning by 15% to Bt12.5bn.